The Great Speeches of an Icon Who Moved Us Forward by Sidney Poitier
Sidney Poitier was Hollywood’s Jackie Robinson as a Black man who crossed the barriers at a time when the barriers were starting to loosen. In his address to the 2005 Black Movie Awards, he recalled the audition that launched his film career. In No Way Out (1950), a noirish thriller that confronted racism by name, he played the lone Black actor in a county hospital.
“By my own objective assessment, my chances were not good,” he said, convinced that “a good-looking guy” would get the part. But he was chosen. At the Black Movie Awards, Poitier spoke of the strong hand held by destiny, chance and luck. “It is an observation that leads me to take a closer look at the hand I held in my own life, which includes the obligation to think for myself.”
Sidney Poitier: The Great Speeches of an Icon Who Moved Us Forward collects the actor’s addresses to awards ceremonies, college commencements and other events. Poitier was of Bahamian origin with little formal education; he credited a Jewish waiter in New York with teaching him to read and his own careful attention to radio broadcasters for his precise enunciation. The remarks collected in the book give evidence that the persona he wore in most of his films was close to the person he was. He spoke of the value of tradition—evolving, not stagnant—and often of the “dignity and integrity of human life.” Poitier worried about “men who have tamed their natural instincts to meet the required standards of indifference” and “will not take responsibility for a choice—even a correct one—if a modest cost to ego and self-perception is attached.”
Published by Running Press, Sidney Poitier: The Great Speeches of an Icon Who Moved Us Forward was compiled and edited by his wife Joanna Poitier and John Malahy with a forward by Oprah Winfrey.
