Sidney Poitier, the first African-American to win a Oscar award for Best Actor for its interpretation in “Lily of the Field” 1963, he died this Friday at the age of 94, as confirmed this Friday by Eugene Torchon-Newry, director of the Bahamas Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Poitier was the first great African American Hollywood starHe is also a director, activist and diplomat.

Inheritance from Sidney Poitier

Sidney Poitier created a remarkable film legacy in one year with three films in 1967, at a time when segregation was prevalent throughout much of the United States.

In “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner“He plays a black man with a white and deep fiancé”In the heat of the night” It was Virgil Tibbs, a police officer who confronted racism during a murder investigation. He also served as a teacher at the London school that year at “To you with love”.

Poitier won his historic best actor Oscar for “Field Lilies” in 1963, played a man who helps a German nun build a chapel in the desert. Five years earlier he had become the first black man to be nominated for an Oscar as a lead actor for his role in “The Defiant Ones.”

Other classic films from that time include “Blue Patch” 1965 and where his character befriends a young white blind woman, “Blackboard Forest” you “A Raisin in the Sun”, which Poitier also did on Broadway.

The actor was born in Miami on February 20, 1927, grew up on a tomato plantation in the Bahamas and had only one year of formal education. He battled poverty, illiteracy, and prejudice to become one of the first black actors recognized and accepted in important roles by the general public.

Throughout his career, he chose his roles carefully, burying the old Hollywood notion that black actors could only appear in degrading contexts as the son of a shoe shiner, a machinist, and a waitress.

“I love you, I respect you, I imitate you,” Denzel Washington, another Oscar winner, once told Sidney Poitier.

The actor was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II

Sidney Poitier He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II of England in 1974 and has served as the Bahamas ambassador to Japan and UNESCO, the United Nations cultural agency. He also served on the board of directors of the Walt Disney Co. from 1994 to 2003.

In 2009, Poitier received America’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, from Barack Obama.