Cicely Tyson paved a way for Black actors
LOS ANGELES — Cicely Tyson was a Black actor who knocked down doors so other women of color could walk through them.
Tyson strategic ally selected powerful roles with an intent to elevate how Black actors were perceived. With dignified grace, she starred in films such as “Sounder” and on TV with“The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.” She strived to shatter stereo types and inspired many Black actresses along the way to follow her footsteps. A younger generation of Black actors — Viola Davis, Kerry Washington and Zen day a among them — all paid homage to Tyson after l earning of her death at age 96 on Thursday.
Davis said Tyson made her feel“valued in a world where there is still a cloak of invisibility for us dark chocolate girls.” Washington felt Tyson was a “foretaste of glory,” while Zendaya, who made Emmy history last year as the youngest lead drama actress winner, called the actor “one of the greatest to ever do it.”
“Thank you for kicking doors down for girls like me,” actor Tika Sumpter said.
Tyson' s death was announced by her family, via her manager Larry Thompson, who did not immediately provide additional details. The actor's passing comes just a few days after the release of her memoir“Just As I Am.”
A onetime model, Tyson began her screen career with bit parts but gained fame int he early1970s when Black women were finally starting to get starring roles. Tyson refused to take parts simply for the paycheck, remaining choosey.
Tyson desired to get away from the ne gative portrayals of Black women with the hopes of highlighting them with powerful prestige.
“Cicely decided early on that her work as an actor would be more than a job,” Oprah Winfrey said in a statement. “She used her career to illuminate the humanity in Black people. The roles she played reflected her values; she never compromised. Her life so fully lived is a testimony to Greatness.”
Gayle King, who interviewed Tyson last week, said the actor was still full of life. She said Tyson expressed t hat she had more to offer with a desire to direct a project in the future.
“This was not a doddering old lady that I've heard many older people say ,` You know what? I' m just tired. I' m just tired. I' m ready togo. I'm done. I'm just tired,'” King said. “That was not Cicely Tyson. She was talking about her desire to direct. She said, `I may have something to share later on.'”
Tyson earned an Oscar nomination for her role in “Sounder,” where she played a Depression-era loving wife of a sharecropper who is confined in jail for stealing a piece of meat for his family. She is forced to care for their children and attend to the crops.
In the 1974 te levision drama“The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” based on a novel by Ernest J. Gaines, Tyson is seen aging from a young woman in slavery to a 110-year-old who campaigned for the civil rights movement of the 1960s. In the touching climax, she laboriously walks up to a “whites only” water fountain and takes a drink as white officers look on.