By George Alexander

There’s dignity and then there’s Sidney Poitier. The man more than personifies the term in every single sense of the word.

Last month, President Obama awarded Poitier, the first African American to ever win an Academy award for best actor, with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor.  I couldn’t have felt more proud.

President Obama awarding Sidney Poitier with the Presidential Medal of Freedom

President Obama said in awarding the first such honorees of his administration that the men and women honored—including civil rights leader Joseph Lowery and dancer Chita Riviera—were “agents of change.” Sidney Poitier was a game-changer if there ever was one.

When you look at the world Poitier entered when he was born in 1927, his rise to Hollywood royalty is all the more astonishing.

It’s hardly news that much of the early African-American cinematic experience often left much to be desired. From the advent of cinema in the late 1890’s onward, African Americans had pretty much engaged in a battle against image misrepresentation.

Of course, in the 1920s, African-American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux was doing his thing—directing more than ten films by the time Poitier was born, with titles like Body and Soul and The Conjure Woman. Yet notwithstanding Micheaux’s non-stereotypical portrayal of black life, when it came to mainstream Hollywood, black actors were, by and large cast in stereotypical, subservient roles that appealed to mass audiences’ pre-existing views and desired renderings of Blackness. You know. The usual suspects: Mammy, Stepin Fetchit, Uncle Tom.

Then came the 1950s and our brother Sidney. Smooth. Cool. Handsome. At the height of his career, women loved him. Men envied him. Poitier was and still is “The Man.”

Poitier, in many ways, symbolized for cinema, in part, what Alain Locke characterized in his 1925 piece “The New Negro,” published during the heat of the Harlem Renaissance. Locke saw the evolution and complexity of the African American and suggested that it should be reflected in art. Locke just broke it down when he said in essay, “The day of “aunties,” “uncles,” and “mammies” is… gone.”

The ascent of Poitier into defiant, defining and transformative roles in Hollywood movies in many ways demonstrates what Locke had in mind a quarter of century before the actor would bust up the screen in the film No Way Out (1950) as no less than the refined Dr. Luther Brooks.  A doctor, you see. That’s what Locke was talking about. Ev-o-lu-tion. In spite of the dignity any servant in real life might embody—and God knows, many a black person went to college on the earnings of hard laborers—the point is that there were black professionals, too. In a medium that shapes our psyches and perceptions, it was important to put them up on the big screen as well.

I’m not sure Poitier ever read the Locke piece; he didn’t have to. The reality is that his actions over the years said it all; he seemed to have had an almost innate understanding of the principles Locke advocated. It’s in his DNA.

So when Poitier got his turn in front of the camera or on the stage, he made it a point to take only roles that debatably served to only uplift the black man. He understood the power of the medium in which he operated and handled his leadership role with  boundless aplomb.

Whether it was as Walter Lee in A Raisin in the Sun (1961); as a high school teacher in To Sir, with Love (1967); or the detective Virgil Tibbs in In the Heat of the Night (1967); Poitier always brought his own brand of black elegance and sophistication to his roles. He disputably defied all of the negative stereotypes.

The deal is that Poitier understood his power. Now it’s one thing to understand your power. It’s a whole other matter to exercise it. Poitier’s willingness to exercise his freedom of choice in terms of movie roles arguably liberated black minds and the minds of the larger populace. Seeing a broader representation of African-American life on the most powerful medium on the planet, was no small feat. It was downright revolutionary.

Poitier’s resolute spirit is perhaps best and simply put in one of his most famous quotes: “But I always had the ability to say no. That’s how I called my own shots.” Now, that my friends is freedom. It is dignity. It is Sidney Poitier.

George Alexander is the author of Why We Make Movies and Queens: Portraits of Black Women and Their Fabulous Hair. He also wrote the VH1 series Black in the 80s.