Poitier and Davis’ faith in their peerless abilities to entertain fueled their rise to the upper echelons of superstardom, but not without risk, struggle, criticism or heartbreak. “It was the one way I might hope to affect a man’s thinking.” And yet, defying the pernicious systemic racism that pervaded American society then in his, even in more enlightened, progressive Hollywood – and even more overt and potentially life-threatening than today – succeed Davis did. “My talent was the weapon, the power, the way for me to fight,” entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr., once said of what he had to rely on when facing what must have seemed like near impossible odds for a Black performer to succeed in show business on a level anywhere close to his white contemporaries. And he realized that through his own stereotype-defying portrayals he could have a seismic impact on the culture –as he later put it, “I did not go into the film business to be symbolized as someone else’s vision of me.” “I knew what it was to be uncomfortable in a movie theater watching unfolding on the screen images of myself – not me, but Black people – that were uncomfortable,” he once said.

A salute to Black Hollywood trailblazers who put their unforgettable mark on the entertainment industry and forever altered the way society looked at race.Īctor and filmmaker Sidney Poitier recognized the power of representation well before the height of his career in the 1960s as the most acclaimed and popular Black screen leading man in Hollywood.

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