Cicely Tyson envisions — and embodies — greatness in memoir
My grandmother, Dorothy M. Holmes, would have been 78 years old this year. She was a Low Country pastor who carried with her a set of Bible-based mantras she’d committed to memory. She revered her God fiercely and wasn’t ashamed to tell anyone she met about how good He’d been to her.
Actress Cicely Tyson’s memoir, “Just as I Am,” reminds me of her, of that special way Black women of a certain age love their God, of their unyielding faith and duty to be good stewards of life’s blessings. I stand in awe of what these women have witnessed and endured, given to the world and left as their legacies. I’ve long made peace with the idea the world may never know my grandmother’s name or the particulars of her story. But by Tyson detailing hers, many will know what women like her survived.
“Just as I Am” is a 400-page chronicle of a history as American as apple pie, as Black as the dead of night, as rich, surely, as Tyson’s favorite meals, oxtails and okra, cooked up by her late ex-husband, Miles Davis. This book is personal, or “plain and unvarnished, with the glitter and garland set aside,” as Tyson writes in the book’s introduction via her skilled collaborator, Michelle Burford. It’s also a universal accounting of just how far we’ve come in Tyson’s near-century of life and how far we still must go.
Tyson, who died Thursday at age 96, wasn’t sure she should write a memoir. She had long adopted a quote from trailblazing civil rights activist Barbara Jordan, who said she’d only write a book “when I have something to say.” After a 60-plus-year career in show business, Tyson finally gives us the honor of knowing, in the words of the Clara Ward gospel hymn, how she got over.
Born in Harlem in 1924 to immigrant parents from Nevis in the West Indies, she had already lived a full life by the time she became a model and actress. She’d gotten pregnant at 17, been forced to marry her child’s father at 18 and divorced long before she found a job in the typing pool at the American Red Cross. Then, on a fateful day in 1954 during her lunch break, a “Black man decked out in a business suit and a scarlet bow tie tapped me on the shoulder.”
Struck by her beauty, a word that was foreign to a 30-year-old, dark-skinned Tyson whose features “historically nullified one’s gorgeousness,” he asked if she was a model. It was the kind of happenstance interaction anyone would likely write off as a weird New
York City occurrence. But in retrospect, Tyson calls it a “love note from heaven.” His inquiry jumpstarted a new chapter in her life.
“Just as I Am” is packed with details from Tyson’s personal and professional journeys few have known: the abuse her father inflicted on her mother; the behindthe-scenes particulars of her legendary (yet poorly compensated) roles in projects like “Sounder,” “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” and “Roots;” the sacrifices she made to provide for her daughter; her tumultuous onagain, off-again relationship with Davis; and how she accomplished all of it against a backdrop of white supremacy, anti-Blackness and sexism many are just now recognizing still exists.
What’s clear is Tyson has lived a life of impact. She inspired Viola Davis’ career, according to the Oscar winner’s heartfelt foreword,
and prompted Tyler Perry to name one of his 12 soundstages after her (alongside the likes of Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, Della Reese and Diahann Carroll). Months after being named a Kennedy Center honoree, Tyson received the last Presidential Medal of Freedom bestowed by President Barack Obama. In “Just as I Am,” she reveals what it’s like to be on the receiving end of all these accolades.
But what shines most from the memoir is how Tyson’s story, while frankly written and supremely eyeopening, isn’t just her own. It’s also the story of Black women in America, of generations past, present and yet to come, whose wills to survive are divinely gifted and ancestrally guided. Perhaps that’s why, in the last pages of the book, she speaks directly to her proverbial sisters and daughters, nieces and grandchildren, revealing what she hopes her legacy will be, whenever God calls her home.
“I want to feel as if I embodied our humanity so fully that it made us laugh and weep, that it reminded us of our shared frailties,” she says. “I want to be
recalled as one who squared my shoulders in the service of Black women, as one who made us walk taller and envision greater for ourselves.”
I think it’s safe to say she’s done that, for Black women and many others. A good
and faithful servant she’s been, and we’re all the better for it.