The Book-Of-The-Semester Project 2007 - 2008

1. Reporting on Research Projects

a.  In 1954, when Sidney Poitier starred in the film Blackboard Jungle, the following names and events were significant:  Brown vs. Board of Education, Thurgood Marshall, Andrews Sisters, Perry Como.

b.  In this chapter Poitier mentions Darryl Zanuck, Joe Mankiewicz, Stanley Kramer, the Mirisch brothers, Ralph Nelson, Mike Frankowitch, and David Susskind when talking about filmmakers with a social conscience.

c.  Poitier also writes about Ethel Waters, Rex Ingram, Mantan Moreland, Stepin Fetchit, Butterfly McQueen, and Hattie McDaniels, who were “chained to stereotypes” (113).

d.  He also writes about Mt. Vernon, New York neighbors Ossie Davis and Rubie Dee.

e.  He refers to Sammy Davis, Jr., Count Basie, Lena Horne, and Count Basie as contemporaries devoted to changing opportunities for fellow blacks.

Do internet research on one individual from each category.  Write reports on their lives. Indicate how they have had an impact on life in America as we know it today.

2.  Working with Quotations

Sidney Poitier’s insistence on the concept of forgiveness rings loud and clear in this chapter.  His own strategy of dealing with personal injury is declared accordingly:
           
“But when I’m done wrong by someone, I’m not above putting that person on the rack in my mind, you know?  I rage against the misdeed by devising all kinds of responses and reactions that would dispute my anger, but it’s all in imaginary form.  Then I become sorry for the thoughts and contemplate forgiveness” (105).

What is your response when you are wronged by someone?  Does Sidney Poitier’s strategy work for you?  Why or why not?

3.  Reading and Responding

While insisting that the process of forgiveness is “never simple, and words (i.e. of forgiveness) can never undo lives destroyed” (106), Sidney Poitier writes the following about genocide in human history:

“We’ve been at this game of human history for a long time, and yet in just the past few years we’ve witnessed hundreds of thousands of people in Rwanda, in Kosovo, in Bosnia, and elsewhere tortured and killed in the name of ethnic differences.  We have a history whose centuries are replete with genocide and attempted genocide.
What humanity has perpetrated goes by different names at different times.  What began in Central and South America in the name of Ferdinand and Isabella culminated at the Little Bighorn and Wounded Knee.  We called it ‘exploring the New World,’ but it caused millions of deaths and the absolute elimination of cultures.
Today, maybe the majority of countries aren’t involved in such cruelties, but the majority of countries rarely have been.  (107)  It’s generally one country, and then another, and then maybe a war between three or four countries.  So here we are at the dawn of a new millennium, and how much closer are we to the enlightenment that would take us beyond such behavior?
It might very well be that all we’re going to get is an opportunity to rail against the darkness, and to hope and dream and imagine and expect that one day our species – in the form of our children, or our grandchildren, or some progeny in generations to come – will arrive at that place” (106-107).

Answer these questions:
1.  Yes or No?  Does Poitier seem to believe that the destructive behavior of humans towards one another is normal?
2.  Yes or No?  Does Poitier believe we are closer than we were ever before to the enlightenment?
3.  Yes or No?  Does Poitier have hope for a better future?
4.  Write a response to Sidney Poitier:  What do you believe?  How do you explain the genocides of so many people in our current era?  Do you want to perceive the destruction of others because of their ethnic differences as normal “human” behavior?  Can you find a way to forgive the perpetrators for their behavior? 

4.  Converting Notes to Text

Working with the notes that you put in the charts designed to facilitate your understanding of Poitier’s discussion of The Defiant Ones and A Patch of Blue, write a summary of the issues surrounding these two films. 

5.  Measuring Up

In this chapter, Sidney Poitier refers to his father’s definition of the “true measure of a man” (100).  He also writes that “the public would take [his] measure” (107) when discussing his Oscar-winning performance in Lilies of the Field, and refers with pride to his performance in A Patch of Blue as being, “by [his] measurement” (112), his best performance ever, because he was satisfied with his work in every scene in the film. 

Now that you have read a good portion of the book, write a critique that explains to what extent you think Sidney Poitier “measures up” not only as an actor and a man but also as his own biographer.