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’.
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