‘Sounder’ Oscar Nominee ‘Miss Jane Pittman’ Emmy Winner was 96 – Deadline

Cicely Tyson, the Honorary Oscar pioneer who starred in Sounder and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and won five Emmy names for her recurring role on How to escape murder, passed away today. She was 96 years old.

His manager Larry Thompson confirmed the news by not providing details of his death.

“I have managed Miss Tyson’s career for over 40 years, and each year has been a privilege and a blessing,” Thompson said in a statement. “Cicely thought of her new memoir as a Christmas tree decorated with all the adornments of her personal and professional life. Today she placed the last ornament, a star, at the top of the tree.

HarperCollins published Tyson’s memoir, Just as i am earlier this week.

Tyson racked up 16 career Emmy nominations and won three, including two in 1974 for his legendary tour The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, in which she played a southern woman who was born into slavery and lives to join the civil rights movement. She was the first black woman to win a Leading Actress Emmy.

This role came two years after Tyson’s Power performance in Sounder, about a Depression-era sharecropping family facing a major crisis. She won an Oscar name for performance, but lost to Liza Minnelli for Cabaret.

Tyson received his third Emmy for Oldest living Confederate widow says it all (1994) and was also nominated for her performances in Roots, King, Sweet Justice, the Story of Marva Collins and A lesson before you die.

During an iconic career that spanned 70 years, Tyson has appeared in dozens of films, TV series and TV dramas and on Broadway. She is perhaps best known to young audiences for her role in Shonda Rhimes’ ABC drama How to get away with a murder, on which she reappeared as Ophelia Harkness, the mother of the main character, Annalize Harkness (Viola Davis), stunned by dementia.

She was also a regular on Ava DuVernay’s OWN series. Cherish the day, playing Miss Luma Lee Langston – a legendary stage and screen star in decades past – in all eight episodes of the drama’s 2020 first season.

Tyson was also a pioneer in Hollywood. She was one of the few black faces in the mainstream for many years – starting out as a model and becoming one of the few blacks to work in major publications.

She was committed to only portraying positive images of black women, and this position likely cost her work in film and television. Yet her work has been widely recognized and she has been honored by the Congress of Racial Equality, the NAACP – she’s been an eight-time Image Award winner and nominated 15 times – and the National Council of Black Women. In 1977, she was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame.

In 2016, President Barack Obama presented Tyson with the country’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, for his contribution to American arts and culture. She was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 2019.

Bruce Haring contributed to this report.

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