Cicely Tyson, the pioneering and award-winning actress whose fierce spirit illuminated both the screen and the stage, died on Thursday. Per Variety, her manager, Larry Thompson, confirmed her passing in a statement: “I have managed Miss Tyson’s career for over 40 years, and each year was a privilege and blessing. Cicely thought of her new memoir as a Christmas tree decorated with all the ornaments of her personal and professional life. Today she placed the last ornament, a Star, on top of the tree.” As of now, a cause of death has not been disclosed. She was 96 years old.
A proud Harlemite, Tyson first entered the cultural zeitgeist as a popular fashion model after getting discovered by an Ebony magazine photographer. With a dazzling smile and an unforgettable brand of charisma, it wasn’t long before she pivoted to acting. “Well, it happened because I learned that I could speak through other people,” Tyson very recently told NPR. “I was a very shy child. I was an observer. I would sit and observe and listen and watch people’s actions in order to understand what they were. I wanted to know what prompted them to say and do the things that they did.” She landed her first TV role in NBC’s Frontiers of Faith in 1951. Her first film role would arrive 6 years later with Carib Gold. The burgeoning actress really proved to be an unmitigated force in the 1960s, landing screen role after screen role until she nabbed a starring bid in the CBS series East Side/West Side, where she became the first Black actor to star in a television drama. Tyson was soon a household name, a scene stealer, and a trusted counterpart to some of the most celebrated performers in entertainment, including Sammy Davis Jr. in the film A Man Called Adam.
In the ‘70s, Tyson’s work began to garner the attention of the Academy, the Golden Globes, and the Emmys. In 1973, Sounder—the critically lauded dramatic film adaptation where she starred as Rebecca Morgan—earned Tyson her only Oscar and Golden Globe nominations. (She was, however, given an Honorary Academy Award in 2018.) Just a year later, she won two major Emmys for her titular role in the made-for-TV movie The Autobiography Of Miss Jane Pittman. If there was a story about critical moments in Black history—Roots, King, The Marva Collins Story—Tyson was at the forefront, distilling her natural gravitas and poise into every script.
On the stage, she was a beacon of grace and possibilities. From 1957 to 1969 she was consistently on (or off) Broadway in roles that varied from upstage to ensemble. One of her biggest parts was in French playwright Jean Genet’s The Blacks, where she played Stephanie Virtue Secret-Rose Diop. The cast was a microcosm of iconic Black culture: Maya Angelou, Louis Gossett Jr., James Earl Jones, Godfrey Cambridge, and Charles Cordone. Running for a total of 1,408 shows, it was the longest-running off-Broadway show of the decade. After that, her career shifted until she was predominately in TV and film. But even as her star continued to rise, she never quite shook her desire to take centerstage: In 2013, Tyson returned to Broadway to play Miss Carrie Watts in The Trip To Bountiful. It was her white whale opportunity, a part that she had been vying for since seeing the show decades prior. That year, she won a Tony for Best Actress In A Play. She reprised her role a year later in the Lifetime film adaptation.
It’s difficult to quantify Tyson’s impact in all facets of entertainment. It’s even harder to adequately state how much she meant to the Black community across multiple generations. Her career spanned seven decades, and yet she never shied away from new opportunities, like her return to Broadway in 2013 or her first music video appearance—Willow Smith’s “21st Century Girl”—in 2011. Just this Tuesday, Tyson released her memoir, Just As I Am, where she traced her life and career.
More importantly, Cicely Tyson taught Black women that they deserved to have a hand in their own destinies and not settle for figurative scraps. “I wait for roles — first, to be written for a woman, then, to be written for a black woman,” she explained to the Entertainment News Service in 1997. “And then I have the audacity to be selective about the kinds of roles I play. I’ve really got three strikes against me. So, aren’t you amazed I’m still here?”
27 Comments
Incredible actor and an icon. She will certainly be missed.
She is incredible in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.
I’m surprised that she didn’t live until she turned 110, just like Miss Jane Pittman.
That tv movie was not only every bit as significant as Roots, it was a precursor to that miniseries. And for most people at the time, it was the vehicle that introduced them to Cicely Tyson. I can still see in my mind the scene where she walks up to the water fountain and takes a drink.
#legend
She just spoke at the ALA Conference last weekend. I’m sure it was pre-recorded, but it’s still hard to believe I was just watching her talk about her life and memoir on Sunday morning. I’m so sad.
This is shocking because she just gave an awesome interview to the NY Times where she seemed like she was in amazing shape: https://nyti.ms/2XrDIePRIP to a legend.
I mean that’s the thing about being 96 — you can be in great shape and it’s still really not surprising if one day you simply don’t wake up. May we all live as long and as well.
My grandmother was 98, still walking around, talking to people, hanging out and being perfectly normal and stubborn. She only moved out of her house at 97 and that was the first year she didn’t have a garden – she decided that she didn’t feel like cooking anymore so went to a retirement home. Then bam, heart attack, done.As ways to go out go, can’t complain about that one.
Bad week to be a famous nonagenarian.
This is a shock. She was just on All Things Considered this past Sunday.https://www.npr.org/2021/01/24/959608246/just-as-i-am-cicely-tyson-reflects-on-her-long-career-and-the-miles-davis-she-kn
Awww. RIP.
“As of now, a cause of death has not been disclosed. She was 96 years old.”Hmmm…
Her chute didn’t open. Her Harley flipped on the Jersey turnpike.
I mean Desmond Llewellyn was in his 90s and killed by a car crash.
She brought a knife to a gunfight.
It’s hardly unusual when a person in their 90s passes away, but the sheer volume of celebrities in that age range that have died in the past couple months sure is startling. COVID really is taking out the remnants of the Greatest Generation, & severely declining the Silent Generation as well.
RIP
If being married to Miles Davis didn’t kill her I honestly thought she’d live forever.
I heard Miles Davis’s Blue in Green for the first time when I was 18 years old, and a quarter of a century and thousands of jazz, classical, rock, soul and pop records later, it’s still the most beautiful piece of music I’ve ever heard.And that’s all I have to say about Miles Davis.
I heard KoB at 18 changed my life. It is absolutely PERFECT record. Not just Blue in Green.The closest other album I have to coompare to Kind of Blue i is Grant Green Idle Moments. It’s almost, not quite, but almost the same vibe except for one song that get a little to upbeat at the end.
I read recently that she was a drug free teetotaler, she managed to stay with Miles and for a difficult sonufabitch Davis would always leave her presence to get high. I don’t think it was a secret he just gave her enough respect to do it out of her sight.I guess he once punched her in the chest though.
I appreciate not everything she’s done in her 70 year career can be mentioned in one article, but was surprised not even a snippet about her award-winning guest turn in How to Get Away With Murder (and yet there was space to mention, ahem, Willow Smith’s music video?).She had quite a few memorable lines in her cameo appearances as Annalise/Anna Mae’s mother – the first that comes to mind is:
I was lucky to see both Cicely Tyson and Barack Obama speak at the 2016 Commencement ceremony for Howard University. And there is nothing more to say, besides BLACK POWER!!!
I remember seeing the interviews where Cicely talked about wearing her hair naturally on TV in the early ‘60s, and the controversy this caused. In today’s climate of shouting, screaming, and attention-seeking, it’s easy to forget how much change someone like Cicely made, quietly yet confidently, in her roles, her style, and her sense of grace. Cicely was also the first black woman to host SNL, which is not a milestone for her career, but was a risk nonetheless, considering the show was huge at this time – a national talking point – and a world away from the type of project that would best showcase her. Yet even with some coarse material and with the general racist issues of that era, she kept her dignity and showed that she was a very funny sketch comedy performer (there’s a talk show sketch with Garrett Morris which still holds up today).
The reunion scene in Sounder still makes me weep. She was incredible in that film.
I know she did many other things, but she was a G in Hoodlum. RIP