Sidney Poitier changed movies, and changed lives

“The Harlem audience was outraged, and yelled, ‘Get back on the train, you fool!” Baldwin wrote. “And yet, even at that, recognized in Sidney’s face, at the very end, as he sings ‘Sewing Machine,’ something noble, true, and terrible, something out of which we come.”

In his memoir, Poitier wrote that he didn’t have a responsibility to be “angry and defiant,” even if he often felt those emotions. He noted that such historical figures as King and Nelson Mandela could never have been so forgiving had they not first “gone through much, much anger and much, much resentment and much, much anguish.”

“When these come along, their anger, their rage, their resentment, their frustration — these feelings ultimately mature by will of their own discipline into a positive energy that can be used to fuel their positive, healthy excursions in life,” he wrote.

His screen career faded in the late 1960s as political movements, Black and white, became more radical and movies more explicit. He would tell Oprah Winfrey in 2000 that his response was to go the Bahamas, fish and think. He acted less often, gave fewer interviews and began directing, his credits including the Richard Pryor-Gene Wilder farce “Stir Crazy,” “Buck and the Preacher” (co-starring Poitier and Belafonte) and the comedies “Uptown Saturday Night” and “Let’s Do It Again,” both featuring Bill Cosby.