Charles M. Blow@CharlesMBlow: Read my column, "My Dinner With Sidney Poitier,"

[BeckyDem]

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Yes, he came to dinner.

In the summer of 2014, I received word through a friend that I was being asked to a dinner in Los Angeles that would include Sidney Poitier.

I’m not easily star-struck. As you can imagine, in my line of work, you meet all types. Being easily impressed is an occupational liability. But Poitier wasn’t just a star, he was a legend, a lion, an almost mythical figure in Black culture and the culture at large. He was Black royalty.

He was more than just the first African American to win an Academy Award for best actor, for his performance in the 1963 film “Lilies of the Field”; he and his lifelong best friend, Harry Belafonte, were also the exemplars of the artist-as-activist model, both risking not only their careers but their lives, at the height of their celebrity, for the cause of civil rights.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/07/opinion/my-dinner-with-sidney-poitier.html?smid=tw-share