Sidney Poitier, first black Best Actor Oscar winner, passes away

Sidney Poitier, who broke through racial barriers as the first Black winner of the best actor Oscar for his role in ‘Lilies of the Field’ and inspired a generation during the civil rights movement, has passed away at age 94, Bahamas Prime Minister Philip Davis said on Friday.

“It is with great sadness that I learned this morning of the passing of Sir Sidney Poitier,” Davis said in a speech broadcast on Facebook.

But even as we mourn, we celebrate the life of a great Bahamian: a cultural icon, an actor and film director, an entrepreneur, civil and human rights activist and, latterly, a diplomat, he added.

Poitier created a distinguished film legacy in a single year with three 1967 films at a time when segregation prevailed in much of the United States.

In ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner’ he played a Black man with a white fiancee and ‘In the Heat of the Night’ he was Virgil Tibbs, a Black police officer confronting racism during a murder investigation. He also played a teacher in a tough London school that year in ‘To Sir, With Love’.

ARR