Filed under: Features, Cinematical
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Before the 1950s, African-Americans did not appear in leading roles in American movies, with the odd exception like Jackie Robinson playing himself in the low-budget ‘The Jackie Robinson Story’](The Jackie Robinson Story (1950) - Movie | Moviefone) (1950). It took Sidney Poitier to become the cinema’s Jackie Robinson, the color barrier-breaker. Poitier did his best to slog through a series of socially relevant movies, all designed to comment safely on relations between blacks and whites, including ‘The Defiant Ones’](The Defiant Ones (1958) - Movie | Moviefone) (1958), ‘In the Heat of the Night’](In the Heat of the Night (1967) - Movie | Moviefone) (1967) and ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner’](http://www.moviefone.com/movie/guess-whos-coming-to-dinner/5545/main) (1967). And so Poitier’s career has become more historically important than it is interesting.
All this really wasn’t so long ago in the grand scheme of things, and when 25 year-old Denzel Washington broke into movies in 1981, things hadn’t changed much. His striking demeanor quickly caused him to be cast in more of those noble, socially relevant-type movies, like ‘A Soldier’s Story’](A Soldier's Story (1984) - Movie | Moviefone) (1984), as anti-apartheid activist Steven Biko in ‘Cry Freedom’](Cry Freedom (1987) - Movie | Moviefone) (1987) and as a black Civil War soldier in ‘Glory’](Glory (1990) - Movie | Moviefone) (1989). I suppose it goes without saying that those, and other movies of the time, focused on white characters in the lead roles and were directed by whites.