Hollywood actor, director and Oscar winner Sidney Poitier has died. He was 94. He died at his home in Los Angeles. Sydney was a popular actor in the 1950s and ’60s with great roles.
Sydney was the first black man to be nominated for an Academy Award for his 1958 film The Different Ones. Six years later, he won the Oscar for Best Actor for his performance in ‘Lilies of the Field’. The films he starred in at a time when racism was rampant in the United States were a mockery of stereotypes. On the miniscreen, South Africa’s first black president, Nelson Mandela, and the first black man in the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Thurgood Marshall, appeared. In 2009, Barack Obama honored him with the US Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.