by JOHN CLARKE
John Clarke pays tribute to the man who refused to accept the degrading roles set aside for Black actors and who played an important role in challenging racism
Sidney Poitier, who died on 7 January, at the age of 94, was ‘the only Black man to consistently win leading roles in major films from the late 1950s through the late 1960s.’ During those years, he ‘broke the mold of what a Black actor could be in Hollywood.’ This personal achievement, moreover, both reflected and influenced the broader struggle against racial oppression in the US. That ‘his screen life intertwined with that of the civil rights movement’ can be shown with one powerful example.
There is a scene in the great film In the Heat of Night, made in 1967, in which Poitier plays a Black northern detective, Virgil Tibbs, drawn into helping to solve a murder in a small southern town. He and the local police chief visit the estate of a plantation owner who is so outraged at being questioned by a Black man that he slaps Tibbs across the face. The backhander is immediately returned, to the shock and horror of everyone present.
It is impossible to overstate how startling it was at the time for a major movie to feature such an act of retaliation by a Black person and how inspiring it was to those facing racism and the institutionalised violence that upheld it. Before he agreed to take on the role, Poitier proposed that the retaliatory slap be included in the scene and he even amended his contract so that it couldn’t be cut from the scene before the movie was released.
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