Trivia: Sidney Poitier was to Hollywood what Jackie Robinson was to major league baseball: simply put, the man who broke the color barrier. An actor, director, and producer, he forever altered the racial perceptions long held by both motion picture audiences and executives, rising to superstar status in an industry forever dominated on both sides of the camera by whites while becoming the first African-American ever to take home an Oscar for Best Actor. Born February 20, 1927, in Miami, FL, Poitier grew up in poverty in the British West Indies. After quitting school at the age of 13, he later joined the U.S. Army, serving in World War II as a medical assistant. Upon his release from duty he relocated to New York City, where he auditioned for the American Negro Theater. When his heavy Bahamian accent prompted laughter from producers, Poitier spent the next six months honing his elocution skills, practicing his enunciation by repeating radio routines, and finally gaining admission to the theatrical troupe's ranks after his second audition.Handsome and athletic, Poitier made his Broadway debut in 1946 in an all-black production of Lysistrata, and moved into films four years later with No Way Out. His impressive turn in 1955's gritty The Blackboard Jungle brought him closer to stardom, and in 1958 he earned his first Academy Award nomination opposite Tony Curtis in Stanley Kramer's social drama The Defiant Ones. The film's focus on racial politics, as well as his increasing popularity with audiences of all racial backgrounds, solidified Poitier's standing as a key figure in the burgeoning civil rights movement, as roles in features including 1959's Porgy and Bess and 1961's Raisin in the Sun established him as the premier black actor of his generation. For 1963's The Lilies of the Field, he made history as the first African-American actor to win an Oscar in a leading role, and with the mainstream success of 1965's A Patch of Blue and 1967's To Sir, With Love, his ascent to superstardom was complete. Much to his credit, Poitier continued to make racially provocative films; in 1967 he appeared in Kramer's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner as the black fiancé of a white woman, while in the same year's Best Picture-winning In the Heat of the Night, he starred as a Philadelphia police detective facing prejudice while investigating a murder in the Deep South. In 1969, Poitier founded the First Artists Production Company, and in 1972 -- at the peak of the blaxploitation era which his earlier success made commercially viable -- announced his directorial debut with Buck and the Preacher. He directed and starred in his next three films (1973's Warm December, 1974's Uptown Saturday Night, and 1975's Let's Do It Again) before starring in Ralph Nelson's 1975 South African political thriller The Wilby Conspiracy, after which he returned to the director's chair with 1977's A Piece of the Action.After directing the 1980 comedy Stir Crazy, Poitier began to decrease his workload; he helmed two more features, 1982's Hanky Panky and 1984's Fast Forward, but then disappeared from filmmaking for the next several years. In 1988, Poitier appeared onscreen for the first time in over a decade in Roger Spottiswoode's thriller Shoot to Kill, followed by a supporting turn in the espionage drama Little Nikita. Upon directing 1990's disastrous Bill Cosby comedy Ghost Dad, he starred as Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall in the television feature Separate But Equal, and in 1992 appeared in the star-studded Sneakers. After another extended absence, Poitier returned in 1995 in the TV movie Children of the Dust, and in 1996 he starred in the long-awaited follow-up to his '67 success To Sir With Love, TV's To Sir With Love 2.A frequent author in addition to his acting, Poitier's book Life Beyond Measure: Letters to My Great-Granddaughter was published in 2008, and the following year he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Trivia: African-American entertainer Bill Cosby, in his own words, "started out as a child," the son of an eight-dollars-a-day maid and an absentee father. A product of grinding poverty, Cosby escaped his rundown Philadelphia neighborhood by dropping out of high school and joining the navy. He earned his diploma via correspondence course, then earned a football scholarship to Temple University. Working nights as a bartender, Cosby discovered he had the ability to make people laugh, so he temporarily shelved his plans to become an athletics teacher and set out to become a nightclub comedian. Most black comics of the era used the race issue in their act; this didn't quite work for Cosby, but relating humorous reminiscences about himself and his childhood buddies worked beautifully. After numerous TV guest shots and several top-selling, Grammy Award-winning record albums, Cosby was signed by producer Sheldon Leonard to co-star with Robert Culp in a weekly TV espionage series, I Spy. This was an era of acute racial tension; many NBC executives were wary about a black leading man, and quite a few Southern affiliates threatened not to run the show, but Leonard, a street scrapper from way back, refused to back down. I Spy was a hit, earning Cosby an Emmy. As the series progressed, the camaraderie between Cosby and Culp deepened, and by the end of the series, Culp was talking and ad-libbing in the same low-key, offbeat cadence that Cosby had adopted for his club appearances! After I Spy, Cosby signed a sweetheart deal with NBC, which guaranteed him a two-year run on his next program, whether the ratings were good or not. The Bill Cosby Show cast the star as high school coach Chet Kincaid, and was unusual for the time in that it was a sitcom minus a laughtrack. At times it was a sitcom minus laughs as well, but NBC had made its promise, and Cosby did his best. In the '70s he teamed with actor/director Sidney Poitier to make a trio of popular crime/comedy features: Uptown Saturday Night, Let's Do It Again, and A Piece of the Action. Viewers who think of Cosby in terms of one success after another have forgotten such failed 1970s TV projects as The New Bill Cosby Show and Cos. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there was The Cosby Show, the eight-season wonder that single-handedly rescued the sitcom format from oblivion in 1984 and enabled the woebegone NBC network to crack the Number One slot in the ratings week after week. And there were guest spots on the award-winning children's show The Electric Company and Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids (1969-84) a superlative Saturday morning cartoon show supervised by Cosby that managed to be what is now called "prosocial" without losing any of the fun. He has also been the long-time commercial spokesman for Jell-O. In the fall of 1996 Cosby returned to prime time TV with yet another The Cosby Show sitcom, again set in New York City and co-starring Phylicia Rashad. Although The Cosby Show became made him arguably the most famous person in the country, he could not capitalize that rush of fame into a film career choosing to make a series of box office bombs including Leonard Part 6 and Ghost Dad. He created yet another TV show, The Cosby Mysteries, and shepherded a successful animated chilsdren's series, Little Bill, to screens in 2001. He appeared in the big-screen version of Fat Albert in 2004.

Trivia: Thin, jug-eared, and rubber-faced black comedian Jimmie Walker is best remembered for playing J.J. on the sitcom Good Times (1974-1979). His exuberant "Dyno-mite!!" was briefly a popular catch phrase back then. Walker made his feature film debut in Sing Thanksgiving (1974). Following the demise of his show, Walker embarked upon a modest film career and carried on with his standup career. He occasionally showed up on television talk shows and in 70's retrospectives, not afraid to poke fun at his '70s persona.

Trivia: Imposing Bahamian actor Calvin Lockhart was at one time an engineering student. Firmly established as a Broadway leading man in the early 1960, Lockhart found that worthwhile opportunities for black performers were severely limited in Hollywood; as a result, he moved to England, where he appeared with regularity in BBC television productions and in such films as A Dandy in Aspic (1966) and Joanna (1968). He returned to the U.S. for the racially supercharged urban drama Halls of Anger (1970), following this personal triumph with an embarrassing appearance in Myra Breckinridge (1970) and a fascinating turn as the charismatic villain of Cotton Comes to Harlem (1972). While he never quite became the "second Sidney Poitier" as predicted by movie publicists, Lockhart was directed by Poitier in Uptown Saturday Night (1974) and Let's Do It Again (1975). Calvin Lockhart's TV work has included recurring appearances on the nighttime serial Dynasty. Lockhart died on Mar 29, 2007, in the Bahamas, of complications from a stroke, shortly after shooting a supporting role in the Nassau-set family drama Rain. He was 72 years old.

Trivia: An actor with hulking presence and a stern countenance, John Amos undercuts his ominous appearance with the kind of warm grin and fun-loving attitude that makes him a natural for comedy. More recognizable as a television actor, the former pro football player has made enough visible forays into film to earn him a reputation in both arenas.After stints in a variety of divergent career fields -- pro sports, advertising, commercial acting, stand-up comedy, comedy writing -- Amos got his big break with the role of Gordy the weatherman on The Mary Tyler Moore Show in 1970. After three years as a side player next to Mary Tyler Moore, Ed Asner, and Ted Knight, Amos thought he'd get the chance for top billing by signing on to the gig for which he is best known: James Evans, the temperamental patriarch of Good Times. But Jimmie Walker, who played son J.J. Evans, soon gave the show a sassy youthful focus with his catchphrase "Dy-no-mite!" stealing the spotlight from Amos and Esther Rolle, who played wife Florida. Amos asked out of his contract after three years, and in 1976, James Evans was killed off in a car accident.The decision to leave a hit series did not squash Amos, as it has some others who have made that bold decision. Instead, Amos stepped into the highly celebrated and widely seen role of the adult Kunta Kinte in the 1977 miniseries Roots. The role challenged the actor's dramatic abilities like none of his previous work had, and he won praise for documenting the travails of a captured African who resists his enslavement.While continuing to turn up in TV series such as Future Cop and Hunter, Amos began making regular appearances in film in the 1980s. Among his more prominent roles were as Seth, companion to Marc Singer's title character in the sword and sorcerer film The Beastmaster (1982); Cleo McDowell, owner of a McDonald's knockoff burger chain and employer of Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall's transplanted dignitaries in Coming to America (1988); and the double-crossing Major Grant, who becomes one of the villains opposite Bruce Willis in Die Hard 2 (1990). Settling back into a career of guest shots on TV shows, Amos occupied himself during the 1990s and beyond with recurring roles on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and as Admiral Percy Fitzwallace on NBC's The West Wing.

Trivia: A graduate of the University of Michigan, actress Denise Nicholas made her first off-Broadway appearance in the 1966 revue Viet Rock. She later appeared in such New York productions as Ceremonies in Dark Old Men and Dame Lorraine, and was active with the Free Southern Theater and the Negro Ensemble Company. She co-starred with Bill Cosby in a number of films, including Let's Do It Again (1975), A Piece of the Action (1977), and Ghost Dad (1990). Nicholas was been a regular on three TV series, playing guidance counselor Liz McIntyre in Room 222 (1969-1974), for which she received three Golden Globe nominations; Olivia Ellis in Baby, I'm Back (1978); and Harriet De Long in In the Heat of the Night (1988-1994). She later starred as an alcoholic mother in domestic drama Ritual (2000). Nicholas is also author of The Denise Nicholas Beauty Book.

Trivia: Steely-eyed, incisive African American character actor Julius W. Harris made his first movie appearance in 1964's Nothing But a Man. Harris' subsequent screen roles included the menacing Tee Hee in the 1973 James Bond entry Live and Let Die and African premiere Longo in First Family (1980), who in the film's funniest scene negotiates a slave-trade operation with American President Bob Newhart. On TV, Harris starred in the Flipper-like syndicated series Salty (1974). One of Julius W. Harris' most memorable TV portrayals was as Ugandan President Idi Amin (substituting for Godfrey Cambridge, who died during production) in the feature-length Victory at Entebbe (1976).

Trivia: Avery was a versatile American character actor onscreen from 1956, beginning with The Harder They Fall.

Trivia: A performer widely regarded as one of the most distinguished and eloquent actors of his or any generation, Ossie Davis combined an overwhelming amount of dramatic talent and instinct (evident via both stage and film work) with an indomitable fervor for social crusade. A native of Cogdell, GA, and a graduate of Howard University, Davis moved to Harlem at an early stage and trained with the Rose McClendon players. The actor then drew a considerable amount of attention -- alongside wife since 1948 Ruby Dee -- for helping to spearhead the American civil rights movement in the 1940s, over 20 years before it caught fire with the general public and mass media. Their combined efforts culminated in involvement with the triumphant March on Washington of August 1963, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his iconic "I Have a Dream" speech. In subsequent years, Davis also helped Dr. King raise money for the Freedom Riders and delivered a poignant eulogy at the funeral of Malcolm X. Meanwhile, Davis and Dee both established themselves as forces in theater and on film. Davis himself debuted on Broadway in 1946, and took his film bow with the 1950 No Way Out, but 13 years passed before his sophomore cinematic effort, the 1963 Gone Are the Days -- an adaptation of his own play Purlie Victorious. Unfortunately, the actor spent much of the '60s appearing in programmers that were either underappreciated (Shock Treatment, 1964) or unworthy of his talents (Sam Whiskey, 1969), and didn't fully realize his potential until he scripted and directed the 1970 Cotton Comes to Harlem, a gritty crime comedy (with a predominantly African-American cast including Godfrey Cambridge and Redd Foxx) that almost singlehandedly jump-started the blaxploitation movement and predated Sweet Sweetback and Shaft by a year. Several additional directorial projects followed throughout the 1970s and '80s and found Davis growing deeper and more profound, and setting his sights higher; these included the ambitious -- if not quite successful -- Kongi's Harvest (1971) and the finely-wrought, socially charged coming-of-age drama Black Girl (1972), arguably Davis' best film. Unfortunately, Davis' third and fourth efforts behind the camera, Gordon's War (1973) and Countdown at Kusini (1976), disappointed on many counts, relegating him (for better or worse) back to acting. He appeared in the racially themed, made-for-television dramas Roots (1977), King: The Martin Luther King Story (1978, in which he played Dr. King Sr.), and Roots: The Next Generations (1979), then -- around a decade later -- achieved a career resurgence thanks to the intelligence and bravura of wunderkind Spike Lee, who cast Davis in six major films: School Daze (1988), Do the Right Thing (1989), Jungle Fever (1991), Malcolm X (1992, as an off-camera narrator), Get on the Bus (1996), and She Hate Me (2004). Two of those films also included Dee in the cast. Davis also enjoyed a renewed profile on television during the early '90s when he was tapped to play a regular character on the charming and laid-back Burt Reynolds sitcom Evening Shade (1990-1994); he portrayed Ponder Blue, the series' narrator and the owner of a barbecue restaurant. Davis remained not only active but astonishingly prolific over the following ten years. Subsequent projects included small supporting roles in Grumpy Old Men (1993), The Client (1994), and Doctor Dolittle (1998), and participation in a series of documentaries, among them Christianity: The First Thousand Years (1998) and We Shall Not Be Moved (2001). Davis died in February 2005, in Miami, while shooting the movie Retirement. He was 87. Davis and Dee co-authored a dual autobiography, In This Life Together, in 1998.

Trivia: Dropped out of high school and joined Job Corps, where he learned to box. Won a gold medal at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. Won his first world heavyweight title in 1973 (against Joe Frazier) and his second more than 20 years later against Michael Moorer in 1994. Retired from boxing in 1977 but returned to the ring in 1987. Finished his career with a 76-5 (68 KOs) record. Named all five of his sons George. Opened the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ in Houston. Spokesman for the George Foreman Lean Mean Grilling Machine, which became so popular that the manufacturer bought out Foreman and his partner for nearly $140 million in 1999 (rather than continue to pay them royalties). Has released multiple cookbooks, an autobiography and a children's book. Is active in the Knock Out Pediatric Cancer initiative and continues to work with the George Foreman Youth & Community Center, which he founded in 1984.

Trivia: Lead actor Richard Young made his television debut in 1965 and appeared in several films beginning in the early '70s. His most significant movie was Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in 1989.

Trivia: African-American lead actress Jayne Kennedy (originally Jayne Harrison before marrying actor, screenwriter, and producer Leon Isaac Kennedy) made her feature-film debut in Group Marriage (1972). In 1982, Kennedy co-hosted the short-lived human interest television series Speak Up America with actor and former evangelist Marjoe Gortner.

Trivia: Actress Hilda Haynes got her start with the American Negro Theater in the 1940s and from there went on to appear in many theatrical productions. She has also appeared in a few films between the early '50s and the late '70s including Taxi (1953), Home from the Hill (1960) and Diary of a Mad Housewife. Haynes has also appeared in several television movies and was an active member of a theatrical union.