Sidney 'The Pioneer' Poitier

To lead films, as an actor of color.  The first black actor to win the Academy Award, in 1963 for "Lilies of the Field".  Successively, he was nominated for Golden Globe and BAFTA for Norman Jewison film "In the Heat of the Night".

Portraying the defiant Philadelphia detective, stranded in a small red-necked Mississippi town, developing working relationship with a bigoted local sheriff, played by Rod Steiger, the film won five Oscars, including Best Film.

This image of performance, strong in defiance, broke the color barrier in the entire show business, the legacy was inherited perhaps, Denzel Washington, Samuel L. Jackson.  Sidney Poitier was 94 years old.