Actor Sidney Poitier, the first black Oscar winner, dies aged 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, winner of the best actor Oscar in 1964 for “Lilies of the Field,” died Thursday in the Bahamas, according to Eugene Torchon-Newry, acting director-general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Bahamas.
Deputy Prime Minister Chester Cooper made the announcement on Facebook, without mentioning the cause of death. The news was also confirmed by an official from the Bahamian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
"We have lost an icon, a hero, a mentor, a fighter, and a national treasure," he said.
His success was an inspiration for a generation during America's civil rights movement. His portfolio was enhanced in 1967 when he starred in three films in a single year, at a time when segregation was rife in much of the United States.
He played a black man with a white fiancee in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", and "In the Heat of the Night" saw him star as Virgil Tibbs, a black police officer confronting racism during a murder investigation.
Other classic films of that era included "A Patch of Blue" in 1965, "The Blackboard Jungle" and "A Raisin in the Sun".
"I love you, I respect you, I imitate you," Denzel Washington, another Oscar winner, once told Poitier at a public ceremony.
Sidney Poitier was born in Miami in 1927 and raised on a tomato farm in the Bahamas before moving to New York at the age of 16.
He had little education and struggled against illiteracy, poverty and prejudice. But he went on to become one of the first black actors to be accepted by mainstream
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