Precursors.

For decades blacks in films, when seen at all, had been used in subservient roles, primarily as servants to white characters. Only occasionally were black characters given integral story lines in white dramas, as in Show Boat (1936), Imitation of Life (1934), or Pinky (1949), and black-centered dramas such as Carmen Jones (1954) were even rarer. But in the late 1950s and early 1960s Sidney Poitier revolutionized Hollywood by becoming the first black feature film star. Poitier specialized in earnest portrayals of calm, patient, well-groomed, highly intelligent, and most of all socially acceptable black men — the kind of black men that seemed safe and even soothing to a suspicious white America. He proved so popular that by 1968 he was the top box-office draw in the country. But Poitier was a mainstream Hollywood star, marketed to a white audience, particularly to those who wanted...