Sidney Poitier, first Black man to win Best Actor Oscar, dies at 94

Sidney Poitier, the groundbreaking actor and enduring inspiration who transformed how Black people were portrayed on screen, became the first Black actor to win an Academy Award for best lead performance, and the first to be a top box-office draw, has died. He was 94.

Poitier died Thursday in the Bahamas, according to Eugene Torchon-Newry, acting director general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Bahamas.

Few movie stars, Black or white, had such an influence both on and off the screen.

Before Poitier, the son of Bahamian tomato farmers, no Black actor had a sustained career as a lead performer or could get a film produced based on his own star power. Before Poitier, few Black actors were permitted a break from the stereotypes of bug-eyed servants and grinning entertainers. Before Poitier, Hollywood filmmakers rarely even attempted to tell a Black person’s story.

He rose to fame in the 1960s, starring in films like “Lilies of the Field,” which led to his Oscar win, as well as “In the Heat of the Night,” when he uttered one of his most famous lines when challenged by a racist sheriff: “They call me Mr. Tibbs.”

Poitier was born in the U.S. and grew up in the Bahamas. He returned to America as a teen, serving in the U.S. Army before entering the entertainment world.

His rise mirrored profound changes in the country in the 1950s and 1960s. As racial attitudes evolved during the civil rights era and segregation laws were challenged and fell, Poitier was the performer to whom a cautious industry turned for stories of progress.

He was the escaped Black convict who befriends a racist white prisoner (Tony Curtis) in “The Defiant Ones.” He was the courtly office worker who falls in love with a blind white girl in “A Patch of Blue.” He was the handyman in “Lilies of the Field” who builds a church for a group of nuns. In one of the great roles of the stage and screen, he was the ambitious young father whose dreams clashed with those of other family members in Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun.”

Debates about diversity in Hollywood inevitably turn to the story of Poitier. With his handsome, flawless face; intense stare and disciplined style, he was for years not just the most popular Black movie star, but the only one.