Cicely Tyson, the Emmy and Tony Award winning actress, has died. She was 96 years old.
E! News received a statement from her manager Larry Thompson His statement read: “I have managed Miss Tyson’s career for over 40 years and each year has been a privilege and a blessing.” Thompson added, “Cicely envisioned her new memory as a Christmas tree adorned with all the ornaments of her personal and professional life. Today she put the last ornament, a star, on the tree.”
On Tuesday, January 26th, she published her memoir Just As I Am.
Tyson won an Emmy Award for Best Actress in a Drama in 1974 for the autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and has since received more than a dozen Emmy nominations, including five for her guest appearance on ABC’s How to Get Away with Murder Viola Davis.
She made history as a black actress in the entertainment industry. After she was nominated for leading actress in a drama series Emmy in 1995 for NBC’s Sweet Justice, it was almost two decades before another black actress was nominated in that category. Kerry Washington had the honor in 2013.
