Cicely Tyson

Tyson was born in 1924 in Harlem, New York after her parents moved there from the island of Nevis in the West Indies. She was the youngest of three children.

When she graduated from high school, she worked as a secretary at the Red Cross. With her striking looks, her friends told her to take up modeling, which then led to acting schools, theater, movies and television. At the height of her modeling career, she appeared in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar.

As a student at the Actors Studio, Tyson began her screen career with small parts in the 1950s but gained fame in the early 1970s when Black actresses were finally starting to get leading roles.

As an African American woman, she demanded respect in every role she played and brought a sense of depth, nobility and grace to every character she portrayed – playing former slaves, civil rights icons, sharecroppers, mothers and many other complicated characters.

Her filmography, which spans more than 60 years, includes some of the most celebrated movies and television shows featuring Black women in major roles, such as Sounder (1972), The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1974), Roots (1977), The Marva Collins Story (1981), The Women of Brewster Place (1989) and The Help (2011).

In 1973, Tyson was nominated for the best actress Oscar for her role in Sounder, a movie about Black sharecroppers in 1930s Louisiana. She didn’t win then, but she was given an honorary award at the 2019 ceremony for her work in Fried Green Tomatoes, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, The Help and countless other films.

Besides her Oscar nomination, she won two Emmys for playing the 110-year-old former slave in the 1974 television drama The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. In 2013, at the age of 88, Tyson won the Tony for best leading actress in a play for the revival of Horton Foote’s The Trip to Bountiful.

But she said her most important accomplishment happened in 2016 when President Barack Obama awarded her the Medal of Freedom.

Tyson was married to jazz great Miles Davis from 1981 to 1988. She is survived by her niece, British actress Cathy Tyson.