For many Black people, Sidney Poitier’s films went beyond entertainment. - NBCBLK
"He was tremendously esteemed by the Black community for the kind of breakthroughs that he made as a Black actor in films," one pop culture essayist and professor said.Sam Falk / The New York Times via ReduxDavid A. Washington said he remembered the moment he became a Sidney Poitier fan.
It was not the violence that enthralled Washington, he said. “I was growing up in Augusta, Georgia, and it was the 1960s. All I had seen in my life was Black people being put down — sometimes physically. To see Sidney Poitier do this on film, in a movie, it was saying, ‘We’re men, too, and you can’t just do anything to us.’ For me at that impressionable time in my life, it meant a lot.”
“I am one of those growing up who was able to see a strong, positive Black man on the screen whose roles were powerful and sent the message that Black people matter, that we are to be respected,” sociologist Rodney Coates, a professor of critical race and ethnic studies at Miami University in Ohio, said. “It seemed every one of his movies was 30 years ahead of its time. You just did not see Black actors in lead roles, standing up for themselves, which was also standing up for Black people.
“Robeson was a very important figure to Poitier, but even he was sometimes compromised in some of the roles he played,” Early said. “Poitier came along and played really dramatic, serious roles that really put the Black actor in a much better light, playing dramatic roles about race and was a dignified figure.”
Poitier’s legendary career includes scenes like in “In the Heat of the Night,” when he commanded respect by telling a racist sheriff in Mississippi, “They call me Mr. Tibbs.”
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