NEW YORK — Individuals travelled throughout the nation and stood in a block-long line to pay respects to Cicely Tyson at a public viewing Monday.
Because it started on a wintry Monday morning, admirers of the pioneering Black actor already have been lined up down the block exterior Harlem’s famed Abyssinian Baptist Church. Some mentioned they’d come from so far as Atlanta or Los Angeles to be there.
Many within the multigenerational crowd held photographs of Tyson, who died Jan. 28. The New York-born actor was 96.
Her household mentioned masks and social distancing can be required on the viewing.
Tyson was the primary Black lady to have a recurring function in a dramatic tv collection, the 1963 drama “East Facet, West Facet.”
Her efficiency as a sharecropper’s spouse within the 1972 film “Sounder” cemented her stardom and earned her an Oscar nomination.
She went on to win two Emmy Awards for enjoying the 110-year-old former slave within the 1974 tv drama “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” and one other Emmy 20 years later for “Oldest Dwelling Accomplice Widow Tells All.”
At age 88, Tyson received a Tony Award for the revival of Horton Foote’s “The Journey to Bountiful” in 2013.
President Barack Obama awarded her the Medal of Freedom in 2016.
The Related Press
