Cicely Tyson, the pioneering Black actor who gained an Oscar nomination for her role as the sharecropper’s wife in “Sounder,” a Tony Award in 2013 at age 88 and touched TV viewers’ hearts in “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” died on Thursday at the ripe age of 96.
Tyson’s death was announced by her family, via her manager Larry Thompson, who did not immediately provide additional details to the cause of her death.
Thompson said; “With heavy heart, the family of Miss Cicely announces her peaceful transition this afternoon. At this time, please allow the family their privacy,”.
A onetime model, Tyson began her screen career with bit parts but gained fame in the early 1970s when Black women were finally starting to get starring roles. 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.”
Tyson was born and raised in Harlem and was first discovered as a model for Ebony Magazine. She began her screen career with bit parts but gained fame in the early 1970s when Black women were finally starting to get starring roles.
Tyson starred as Rebecca Morgan, a sharecropper in the 1972 film “Sounder” and was nominated for best actress at the Academy Awards the next year.
Tyson also won two Emmy awards for “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” and in 2013 she won a Tony Award for “The Trip to Bountiful.”
In 2016, President Barack Obama awarded Tyson the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, and the year before that she received the Kennedy Center Honors lifetime achievement award.
