Tyson, Cicely Louise

Impact on the world

Publicly committed in a 1972 interview to never again play prostitutes, drug addicts, or maids, the demeaning roles she said Black actresses of her era had been offered repeatedly, declaring she would refuse such parts even if it meant returning to poverty, a stance that left her without steady work for extended stretches but that she sustained for the rest of her career; her performance the same year as a sharecropper's wife in 'Sounder' earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, and her title role in 1974's 'The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,' watched by an estimated 40 million viewers, won her two Emmy Awards portraying a fictional formerly enslaved woman's life from bondage through the dawn of the civil rights movement.

Life & background

Born in East Harlem in 1924 to parents who had emigrated from the Caribbean island of Nevis, Tyson sold shopping bags on the street at age nine to help support her family after her father worked as a carpenter and painter and her mother as a domestic worker, growing up in a strict, devoutly religious household that forbade movies and dating; her mother initially refused to speak to her after she pursued acting, relenting only after seeing her perform on stage. Discovered by an Ebony magazine photographer and launched into modeling, she trained under Lee Strasberg, made her film debut in a bit part in 1956, and became, in 1962, the first African American woman to wear a natural Afro hairstyle on American television, a deliberate styling choice during her run on the CBS drama 'East Side/West Side.' Her 1972 declaration against accepting characterless, demeaning roles, made publicly to Parade magazine, defined the second half of her career; she said she would not play that kind of part again even if it meant starving, and held to it through years of reduced work before 'Sounder' and 'The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman' established her as one of the era's most respected dramatic actresses. She went on to roles in 'Roots' (1977), playing both Harriet Tubman and Coretta Scott King in later television films, and continued working steadily into her nineties, appearing in 'How to Get Away with Murder' and 'House of Cards'; she received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2015, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016, and an Academy Honorary Award in 2018 recognizing her seven-decade body of work, becoming the first Black woman to receive that particular Oscar distinction. She married jazz trumpeter Miles Davis in 1981 in a ceremony officiated by Atlanta's mayor at fellow actor Bill Cosby's home, a tumultuous marriage she credited herself with helping Davis survive by supporting his recovery from cocaine addiction before the couple divorced in 1988; she died in January 2021 at age 96, having published her memoir just days before her death.

Sources

1. Women's History Museum; Rotten Tomatoes (Major TV Milestones in Black History); NPR obituary