Sidney appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show when the daytime talk show was still on the air. During his appearance, he explained to Oprah how he overcame the racial prejudices of the South and came to understand who he was as a Black man and a human being, despite his circumstances. "Before I got to Florida, I had the opportunity, through my mother and my dad, to have set some kind of foundation as to who I was," he said in his interview. "And I was not what I was required to be in Florida . . . I was taught that I had basic rights as a human being. I was taught that I was someone."