They Call Him Mr. Poitier

This was probably the best news I read all day (from this morning's Inquirer)...

What a magnificent performance by the Marian Anderson Award selection committee in choosing Sidney Poitier as this year's recipient.

In November, Poitier will join an exclusive club of seven, including his friend Harry Belafonte, who in 1998 became the first recipient. The other past recipients are Gregory Peck, Elizabeth Taylor, Quincy Jones, Danny Glover and Oprah Winfrey.

During the turbulent civil rights era, Poitier sent a powerful message as he portrayed strong, conscience-driven black men much different from the stereotypically lazy, funny African American males with whom white movie audiences were more comfortable.

In 1958, Poitier became the first black man to be nominated for the Academy Award for best actor in a leading role for The Defiant Ones. In 1963, he took home that Oscar for his role in Lilies of the Field as the "Amen"-singing ex-GI who helps five nuns build a church.

His work didn't keep Poitier out of the civil rights movement. He was one of the speakers preceding the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in Washington. Ten years later, Poitier gave the keynote address at the 10th convention of King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He and Belafonte continually helped raise money for King's efforts.

Actor/director/producer/writer Poitier is a fitting recipient for an award named in honor of Marian Anderson, the Philadelphia-born contralto whose impact also went far beyond her talent as an entertainer. In the 1930s and '40s, America's desire to hear Anderson sing overcame the prejudiced will of those who unsuccessfully sought to keep her audiences segregated.

The Anderson Award goes to an artist who has excelled in his craft and shown a commitment to better society. That's Sidney Poitier.

When Poitier received a Lifetime Achievement Oscar a few years ago (at the '04 Academy Awards, I believe), he walked carefully onstage to a thunderous ovation (his stride slowed somewhat by age, but the determined gaze remained constant) and thanked many people whom he'd worked with in his career. Many of these individuals had died, and Poitier, in naming them (Spencer Tracy, Rod Steiger, particularly director Stanley Kramer of "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" and Richard Brooks of "Blackboard Jungle") prefaced their names with "the late" to connote that.

I believe what Poitier was trying to communicate at that moment, in his typically firm and dignified but understated way, was that people in the arts must never lose sight of the commitment to their craft and issues of social justice, and that the mantle once worn by others must be picked up by anyone who attempts to communicate through a mass medium of any kind whatsoever. It's definitely a lesson and an example worth remembering.

Now on another note, I should point out that blogging activity here, if it happens at all over the next few days, is going to be very light into the middle of next week (work and play).

Courage.