Hundreds pay final respects to legendary actress Cicely Tyson
Free Press wire reports | 2/18/2021, 6 p.m.
NEW YORK - People traveled across the country and stood in a block-long line to pay last respects to the late legendary actress Cicely Tyson at a public viewing Monday.
Hundreds of admirers of the pioneering Ms. Tyson lined up outside Harlem’s famed Abyssinian Baptist Church despite the wintry weather. Some said they had come from as far as Atlanta and Los Angeles to be there.
Many in the multigenerational crowd held photos of Ms. Tyson, who died Thursday, Jan. 28, 2021. She was 96.
A private memorial service was held at the church on Tuesday, where former President Bill Clinton, Tyler Perry, Valerie Simpson and BeBe Winans were among the speakers and those offering tribute in what was described as “a moving experience.”
Ms. Tyson was the first Black woman to have a recurring role in a dramatic television series, the 1963 drama “East Side, West Side.”
Her performance as a sharecropper’s wife in the 1972 movie “Sounder” cemented her stardom and earned her an Oscar nomination.
She went on to win two Emmy Awards for playing a 110-year-old former enslaved woman in the 1974 television drama “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” and received another Emmy Award 20 years later for “Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All.”
At age 88, Ms. Tyson won a Tony Award for the revival of Horton Foote’s “The Trip to Bountiful” in 2013.
Former President Barack Obama award- ed her the Medal of Freedom in 2016.
