Sidney L. Poitier ( February 20, 1927 – January 6, 2022)

In 1964, Sidney Poitier won the Academy Award for Best Actor becoming
the first Black male and Bahamian actor to win the award.

He also received two further Academy Award nominations, ten
Golden Globes nominations, two Primetime Emmy Awards
nominations, six BAFTA nominations, eight Laurel nominations,
and one Screen Actors Guild Awards nomination. Poitier was
one of the last surviving major stars from the Golden Age of
Hollywood cinema, and after the death of Kirk Douglas in 2020,
was the oldest living and earliest surviving male Academy Award
winner

The star’s death was confirmed to Fox News on Friday by the
Bahamian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Office.

Sidney Poitier was awarded the 1964 Academy Award for
Best Actor for his role in the movie Lilies of the Field.

BRIAN THOMAS

Charles Augustus Lindbergh (February 4, 1902 – August 26, 1974)

Charles Lindbergh was a aviator, military officer, author, inventor, and
activist. At age 25 in 1927, he went from obscurity as a U.S. Air Mail pilot
to instantaneous world fame by winning the Orteig Prize for making a
nonstop flight from New York to Paris.

Martin Luther King Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968)

On January 15, 1929, Martin Luther King, Jr. is born in Atlanta, Georgia,
the son of a Baptist minister. King received a doctorate degree in theology
and in 1955 helped organized the first protest of the African-American civil
rights movement: the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott. Influenced by Mohandas Gandhi, he advocated civil disobedience and nonviolent
resistance to segregation in the South. The peaceful protests he led
throughout the American South were often met with violence, but King
and his followers persisted, and the movement gained momentum.

A powerful orator, King appealed to Christian and American ideals and
won growing support from the federal government and Northern whites.

In 1963, Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph led the massive March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom; the event’s grand finale was King’s 
famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Two hundred and fifty thousand people
gathered outside the Lincoln Memorial to hear the stirring speech. 

TIM MAGUIRE

Actor/producer Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio is 45 yeas old today. As
of 2019, his films have earned $7.2 billion worldwide, and he has
placed eight times in annual rankings of the world’s highest-paid
actors. His accolades include an Academy Award and three Golden Globe Awards.

Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio at the 88th Academy Awards (2016):
Best Actor, win, for The Revenant.

DAVID MELENDY
   

African American taxi driver Rodney King was severely beaten by
Los Angeles police officers on this day in 1991 during an arrest 
that followed a pursuit through the streets of Los Angeles. The
scene was captured on amateur video, one of the first police 
brutality videos of its kind. It forever changed the conversation
about police and race in America.

National Guardsmen patrol Los Angeles during the rioting after the acquittal of officers involved in the beating of Rodney King.

The first issue of Time magazine was published on this day in 1923
by Briton Hadden and Henry Luce. It was the first weekly news
magazine in the United States. The distinctive red border for which
the magazine has come to be known was lacking. On the cover
was the now-obscure Joseph G. Cannon, former House Speaker.
.