Hundreds pay respects to actor Cicely Tyson at her viewing
NEW YORK ( AP) — People traveled across the country and stood in a block-long line to pay respects to Cicely Tyson at a public viewing Monday.
Hundreds of admirers of the pioneering Black actor lined up outside Harlem’s famed Abyssinian Baptist Church on a wintry Monday. Some said they had come from as far as Atlanta or Los Angeles to be there.
Many in the multigenerational crowd held photos of Tyson, who died Jan. 28. The New Yorkborn actor was 96.
Her family said masks and social distancing would be required at the viewing.
Tyson was the first Black woman to have a recurring role in a dramatic television series, the 1963
drama “East Side, West
Side.”
Her performance as a sharecropper’s wife in the 1972 movie “Sounder” cemented her stardom and earned her an Oscar nomination.
She went on to win two
Emmy Awards for playing the 110-year-old former slave in the 1974 television drama “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” and another Emmy 20 years later for “Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All.”
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin’s Republican U. S. Sen. Ron Johnson downplayed the storming of the U. S. Capitol last month, saying on conservative talk radio Monday that it “didn’t seem like an armed insurrection to me.”
Johnson’s comments on WISN-AM in Milwaukee came after he voted Saturday to acquit former President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial. Johnson said in the interview that Trump’s attorneys “eviscerated” legal arguments made by Democrats seeking to convict Trump for instigating the insurrection.
Johnson is one of Trump’s most ardent supporters. He is up for reelection in 2022 but hasn’t said yet whether he will seek a third term.
Johnson condemned the violence and five deaths during the Jan. 6 riot but said what happened was not an armed insurrection.
“When you hear the word ‘ armed,’ don’t you think of firearms?” Johnson said. “Here’s the questions I would have liked to ask — how many firearms were confiscated? How many shots were fired? I’m only aware of one, and I’ll defend that law enforcement officer for taking that shot. It was a tragedy, but I think there was only one. If that was a planned armed insurrection, man, you had really a bunch of idiots.”
Law enforcement officials have said in court filings that guns, bombs and other weapons were found on people who stormed the Capitol, in their vehicles and elsewhere. The insurrectionists also used flag poles, stolen police shields, crutches, fire extinguishers, sticks and other objects to attack police officers and force entry into the Capitol.