Actress, Cicely Tyson, Lived So Black Children Could Dream
The historic importance of the former Mrs. Miles Davis
A giant has fallen. Even at the age of ninety six, the death of legendary actress Cicely Tyson feels premature. It feels like she was taken from us way too soon. Being an actress of her generation, much of her work was done before my birth, but in the hearts and homes of black America she was always there. Cicely Tyson was always ours, in a way that perhaps no other black actress in the history of American film making ever was.
Through the long and historically racist history of America film, Hollywood has usually not given black people and most other minority groups many chances to play meaningful roles. When a black actress was given the rare opportunity to play a leading lady or even a significant supporting role, studios and movie executives usually chose a certain type of black actress whose looks were more eurocentric in terms of beauty standards. Cicely Tyson looked like black America.
She was the kind of black that Hollywood executives wouldn’t even let walk in the door for anything more than a role playing a maid or a prostitute. The role of the rare black leading lady was traditionally saved for a fair skinned, Dorothy Dandridge type. Yet Cicely Tyson climbed unconquerable mountains. The price…
