The journey of Cicely Tyson started on December 19, 1924, when she was born in the Bronx, New York City. Later, her family relocated to East Harlem, NYC. Tyson was one of three children born to Fredericka (Huggins) Tyson, a domestic worker. Her father was William Augustine Tyson, who worked as a carpenter and painter. Her parents were immigrants from Nevis in the West Indies. Her father arrived in New York City at the age of 21 and was processed at Ellis Island on August 4, 1919. When I was in high school (during the 1990's), I did a history project on Ellis Island and knew that Afro-Caribbeans were in Ellis Island in order to live in the United States of America. Cicely Tyson was raised in a religious household as she sang in the choir and attended prayer meetings at an Episcopal church in East Harlem. Tyson's mother supported her being an actress after she saw Cicely appear on stage. By the time she was 18, Cicely Tyson married Kenneth Franklin on December 27, 1942. They had a daughter two months later (named Joan Tyson), in February 1943. According to her divorce decree, her husband abandoned her after less than 18 months of marriage. The marriage was formally dissolved by 1956. In 1958, Cicely Tyson was discovered by a photographer for Ebony magazine, and she became a successful fashion model. Her first acting role was part in the 1956 film Carib Gold. She was onstage in Vinnette Carrol's production of Dark of the Moon at the Harlem YMCA in 1958. She had small roles in the 1959 films Odds Against Tomorrow and The Last Angry Man. She was in the 1960 comedy Who Was That Lady? By 1961, she made her television debut in the NBC series Frontiers of Faith.
By the early 1960's, Tyson appeared in the original cast of French playwright Jean Genet's The Blacks. She played the role of Stephanie Virtue Secret-Rose Diop. Other cast members were Maya Angelou, James Earl Jones, Godfrey Cambridge, Louis Gossett Jr., and Charles Gordone. The show was the longest-running off-Broadway non-musical of the decade, running for 1,408 performances. Tyson worked in many theater productions too. She earned the Vernon Rice Award in 1962 for her Off-Broadway performance in Moon on a Rainbow Shawl. In 1963, she was a student at New York's New School for Social Research. In that year, she was on the network television game show To Tell the Truth as an "imposter" for Australian singer Shirly Abicair, receiving 2 of the four possible votes. Cicely Tyson once worked for a social services agency. Producer David Susskind discovered her and was cast for the role in the CBS TV series East Side/West Side (1963-1964), playing the secretary of a social worker played by George C. Scott. She was at the time the only African American regular member of a TV cast including showing cornrows too. The show talked about social issues. One episode showed an African American couple in Harlem (played by James Earl Jones and Diana Sands) was blacked out in Atlanta and Shreveport, Louisiana. By the 1960's, she dated the jazz trumpeter Miles Davis. This was when Davis was in the process of divorcing dancer Frances Davis. Miles Davis used a photo of Cicely Tyson in his 1967 album of Sorcerer. Davis told the press in 1967 that he wanted to marry Tyson in March 1968 after his divorce was finalized. Yet, he married Berry Davis that September. By the mid-1960's, Cicely Tyson has a recurring role in the soap opera of The Guiding Light. She was in the 1966 film A Man Called Adam featuring Sammy Davis Jr. (who played a jazz musician who led a destructive life). Cicely Tyson was in the 1968 film The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. She had a small role in the film version of The Comedians back in 1967) based on the Graham Greene novel.
By the 1970's, Cicely Tyson experienced superstardom. In 1972, Cicely Tyson played the role of Rebecca Morgan in the film Sounder. Sounder was a film about African Americans in the rural South during the early 20th century trying to survive literally from racism and economic oppression. She was nominated for both the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for her work on Sounder. She won the NSFC Best Actress and NBR Best Actress Awards. In 1974, she played the title role in the television film The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. Tyson's portrayal of a centenarian black woman's life from slavery until her death before the Civil rights movement won her a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress – Miniseries or a Movie and an Emmy Award for Actress of the Year – Special. Tyson was also nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her work in this television film. In 1977, Tyson was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame. In 1980, she received the Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement. In 1982, Tyson was awarded the Women in Film Crystal Award. The award is given to outstanding women who, through their endurance and the excellence of their work, have helped to expand the role of women within the entertainment industry. In 1988, Tyson received a Candace Award for Distinguished Service from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women. In 1997, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Cicely Tyson and Miles Davis rekindled their relationship in 1978, and they married on November 26, 1981. The ceremony was conducted by Atlanta mayor Andrew Young at the home of actor and comedian Bill Cosby. The marriage ended in 1988. Miles Davis had drug addiction issues, had a volatile temper, and Davis committed adultery. The couple lived in Malibu, California, and New York City until the divorce was finalized in 1989. Davis died in 1991.
In 1989, Tyson appeared in the television miniseries The Women of Brewster Place. In 1991, Tyson appeared in Fried Green Tomatoes as Sipsey. In the 1994–95 television series Sweet Justice, Tyson portrayed a civil rights activist and attorney named Carrie Grace Battle, a character she modeled after Washington, D.C. civil rights and criminal defense lawyer Dovey Johnson Roundtree. Her other notable film roles include the dramas Hoodlum (1997) and Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2005), and the television films Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (1994) (for which she received her third Emmy Award) and A Lesson Before Dying (1999). In 2005, Tyson co-starred in Because of Winn-Dixie.
In 2005, Tyson was honored at Oprah Winfrey's Legends Ball. She was also honored by the Congress of Racial Equality, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the National Council of Negro Women. Tyson received honorary degrees from Clark Atlanta University, Columbia University; Howard University; and Morehouse College, an all-male historically black college. The Cicely Tyson School of Performing and Fine Arts, a magnet school in East Orange, New Jersey, was named after her in 2009.
Tyson was awarded the NAACP's 2010 Spingarn Medal for her contribution to the entertainment industry, her modeling career, and her support of civil rights. In 2010, Tyson appeared in Why Did I Get Married Too? and narrated the Paul Robeson Award-winning documentary Up from the Bottoms: The Search for the American Dream. In 2011, Tyson appeared in her first music video in Willow Smith's 21st Century Girl. That same year, she played Constantine Jefferson, a maid in Jackson, Mississippi, in the critically acclaimed period drama The Help. Set in the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement, the film won the Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Acting Ensemble and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. In 2013, Tyson played a supporting role in the horror film The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia. Beginning in 2014, Tyson guest-starred on How to Get Away with Murder as Ophelia Harkness, the mother of main character Annalise Keating (Viola Davis); for this role, she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series in 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020. At the 67th Tony Awards, on June 9, 2013, Tyson won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her performance as Miss Carrie Watts in The Trip to Bountiful. Upon winning, the 88-year-old actress became the oldest recipient of the Best Actress Tony Award. She also won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play for the role.
Tyson was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors in 2015. She was awarded the United States' highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, by President Barack Obama in November 2016. In September 2018, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that Tyson would receive an Academy Honorary Award. On November 18, 2018, Tyson became the first African American woman to receive an honorary Oscar. In 2018, Tyson was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. One of 12 soundstages was named after Tyson in her honor at Tyler Perry Studios. She was chosen to be inducted into the Television Academy's Hall of Fame in 2020. In 2020, she starred in the popular movie A Fall From Grace which was featured on Netflix. Cicely Tyson passed away on January 28, 2021, at the age of 96. Her funeral was held on February 16 at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem and was attended by Tyler Perry, her godson Lenny Kravitz, and Bill and Hillary Clinton. In 2022, she was posthumously inducted into the Black Music and Entertainment Walk of Fame.
Sidney Poitier was born on February 20, 1927, in Miami, Florida. His parents are Afro-Bahamian farmers. His parents are Evelyn (nee Outten) and Reginal James Poitier. The family-owned a farm on Cat Island. The family would go to Miami to sell tomatoes and other produce to wholesalers. Some believe that Poitier's ancestors came from Haiti, among the runaway slaves who formed maroon communities all over the Bahamas (like in Cat Island). Poitier is a French name. There is a planter named Charles Leonard Poitier who immigrated from Jamaica during the early 1800's. Poitier is a name that has been introduced to the UK since the Norman Conquest in the eleventh century. Sidney Poitier was the youngest of seven children. His father worked as a cab driver in Nassau, Bahamas. Sidney Poitier grew up in the Bahamas, which was a British colony back then. He was born in America, so he has United States citizenship. By the time, he was 15 years old, Sidney Poitier was sent to Maimi to live with his brother's large family. Poitier experienced firsthand the Jim Crow racism in Florida. By the time when he was 16 years old, he moved to New York City. He wanted to be an actor. At first, he worked as a dishwasher. Sidney Poitier worked hard. He failed his first audition with the American Negro Theater due to his inability to fluently read the script. Later, an elderly Jewish waiter sat with him every night for several weeks, helping him to improve his reading by using the newspaper. Sidney Poitier enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War II in November of 1943. He didn't admit his real age when he joined the Army. He was assigned to a Veteran's Administration hospital in Northport, New York, and was trained to work with psychiatric patients. Poitier became upset with how the hospital treated its patients and feigned mental illness to obtain a discharge. Poitier confessed to a psychiatrist that he was faking his condition, but the doctor was sympathetic and granted his discharge under Section VIII of Army regulation 615–360 in December 1944.
In 1947, Poitier was a founding member of the Committee for the Negro in the Arts (CNA), an organization whose participants were committed to a left-wing analysis of class and racial exploitation. Among his other CNA-related activities, in the early 1950s he was a Vice Chair of the organization. In 1952, he was one of several narrators in a pageant written by Alice Childress and Lorraine Hansberry for the Negro History Festival put on by the leftist Harlem monthly newspaper Freedom. Poitier was first married to Juanita Hardy from April 29, 1950, until 1965. Though Poitier became a resident of Mount Vernon in Westchester County, New York in 1956, they raised their family in Stuyvesant, New York, in a house on the Hudson River.
By late 1949, Poitier had to choose between leading roles on stage and an offer to work for Darryl F. Zanuck in the film No Way Out (1950). His performance in No Way Out, as a doctor treating a Caucasian bigot (played by Richard Widmark, who became a friend), was noticed and led to more roles, each considerably more interesting and more prominent than those most African-American actors of the time were offered. In 1951, he traveled to South Africa with the African-American actor Canada Lee to star in the film version of Cry, the Beloved Country. Poitier's distinction continued in his role as Gregory W. Miller, a member of an incorrigible high-school class in Blackboard Jungle (1955). But it was his performance in Martin Ritt's 1957 Edge of the City that the industry could not ignore. It was a pitch towards stardom granted him. In 1958 he starred alongside Tony Curtis in director Stanley Kramer's The Defiant Ones. The film was a critical and commercial success with the performances of both Poitier and Curtis being praised. The film landed eight Academy Award nominations including Best Picture and Best Actor nominations for both stars, making Poitier the first Black male actor to be nominated for a competitive Academy Award as best actor. Poitier did win the British Academy Film Award for Best Foreign Actor.
Poitier acted in the first production of A Raisin in the Sun alongside Ruby Dee on the Broadway stage at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in 1959. The play was directed by Lloyd Richards. The play introduced details of Black life to the overwhelmingly white Broadway audiences, while director Richards observed that it was the first play to which large numbers of Black people were drawn. The play was a groundbreaking piece of American theater with Frank Rich, critic from The New York Times writing in 1983, that A Raisin in the Sun "changed American theater forever." For his performance, he earned a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play nomination. That same year Poitier would star in the film adaptation of Porgy and Bess (1959) alongside Dorothy Dandridge. For his performance, Poitier received a 1960 Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.
In 1961, Poitier starred in the film adaptation of A Raisin in the Sun for which he received another Golden Globe Award nomination. Also in 1961, Poitier starred in Paris Blues alongside Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Louis Armstrong, and Diahann Carroll. The film dealt with the American racism of the time by contrasting it with Paris's supposed "open acceptance" of Black people. In 1963, he starred in Lilies of the Field. For this role, he won the Academy Award for Best Actor and became the first Black male to win the award. His satisfaction at this honor was undermined by his concerns that this award was more of the industry congratulating itself for having him as a token and it would inhibit him from asking for more substantive considerations afterward. Poitier worked relatively little over the following year; he remained of the few actors of African descent whose roles offered were not predominantly typecast as a soft-spoken appeaser.
In 1964, Poitier recorded an album with the composer Fred Katz called Poitier Meets Plato, in which Poitier recites passages from Plato's writings. He also performed in the Cold War drama The Bedford Incident (1965) alongside the film's producer Richard Widmark, the Biblical epic film The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) alongside Charlton Heston and Max von Sydow, and A Patch of Blue (1965) co-starring Elizabeth Hartman and Shelley Winters.
Poitier was aware of this pattern himself but was conflicted on the matter (of the perception of being too typecast). He wanted more varied roles; but he also felt obliged to set an example with his characters, by challenging old stereotypes, as he was one the only major actors of African descent being cast in leading roles in the American film industry at the time. For instance, in 1966, he turned down an opportunity to play the lead in an NBC television production of Othello with that spirit in mind. Despite this, many of the films in which Poitier starred during the 1960s would later be cited as social thrillers by both filmmakers and critics.
In 1967, he was the most successful draw at the box office, the commercial peak of his career, with three popular films, To Sir, with Love, and In the Heat of the Night, and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Although these three films seemingly shared little similarity, they all, albeit not overtly, dealt with racial and social issues. Sidney Poitier was in the film For the Love of Ivy showing Black Love with the actress Abbey Lincoln (who is a singer).
In 1959, Poitier began a nine-year affair with actress Diahann Carroll. He married Joanna Shimkus, a Canadian actress who starred with Poitier in The Lost Man in 1969, on January 23, 1976, and they remained married until his death. He had four daughters with his first wife Juanita Poitier (Beverly, Pamela, Sherri, and Gina) and two with his second wife Joanna Shimkus (Anika and Sydney Tamia).
In 1972, Sidney Poitier made his feature film directorial debut, the Western Buck and the Preacher, in which Poitier also starred, alongside Harry Belafonte and Ruby Dee. Poitier replaced the original director, Joseph Sargent. The following year he directed his second feature, the romantic drama A Warm December. Poitier also starred in the film alongside Esther Anderson. In 1995, he received the Kennedy Center Honor and in 2009, Poitier was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama. He was also named an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in 1974. In 1986, he gave the Commencement Address to the University of Miami graduating class and was given the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Fine Arts.
In 1982, he received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award. In 1988, he starred in Shoot to Kill with Tom Berenger. In 1992, he starred in Sneakers with Robert Redford and Dan Aykroyd. In 1997, he co-starred in The Jackal with Richard Gere and Bruce Willis. In the 1990s, he starred in several well-received television movies and miniseries such as Separate but Equal (1991), To Sir, with Love II (1996), Mandela and de Klerk (1997), and The Simple Life of Noah Dearborn (1999). He received Emmy nominations for his work in Separate but Equal and Mandela and de Klerk, as well as a Golden Globe nomination for the former. He won a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album in 2001.
In 1995, he received the Kennedy Center Honor. From 1997 to 2007, he was the Bahamian Ambassador to Japan. In 1999, he ranked 22nd among male actors on the "100 Years...100 Stars" list by the American Film Institute and received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. In 2002, he was given an Honorary Academy Award, in recognition of his "remarkable accomplishments as an artist and as a human being."
In 2002, Poitier received the 2001 Honorary Academy Award for his overall contribution to American cinema. Later in the ceremony, Denzel Washington won the award for Best Actor for his performance in Training Day, becoming the second Black actor to win the award. In his victory speech, Washington saluted Poitier by saying "I'll always be chasing you, Sidney. I'll always be following in your footsteps. There's nothing I would rather do, sir."
In 2009, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States, by President Barack Obama. In 2016, he was awarded the BAFTA Fellowship for outstanding lifetime achievement in film.
In addition to his six daughters, Poitier had eight grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. When Hurricane Dorian hit the Bahamas in September 2019, Poitier's family had 23 missing relatives.
With the death of Ernest Borgnine in 2012, Poitier became the oldest living recipient of the Academy Award for Best Actor. On March 2, 2014, Poitier appeared with Angelina Jolie at the 86th Academy Awards to present the Best Director Award. He was given a standing ovation and Jolie thanked him for all his Hollywood contributions, stating: "We are in your debt." Poitier gave a brief speech, telling his peers to "keep up the wonderful work" to warm applause. In 2021, the academy dedicated the lobby of the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles as the "Sidney Poitier Grand Lobby" in his honor.
On January 6, 2022, Poitier passed away at his home in Beverly Hills, California, at the age of 94. His death was confirmed by Fred Mitchell, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Bahamas. According to a copy of his death certificate obtained by sources, the cause of death was a cardiopulmonary failure, with Alzheimer's disease and prostate cancer listed as underlying causes.
Many in the entertainment industry also paid tribute to Poitier, including Martin Scorsese who wrote, "For years, the spotlight was on Sidney Poitier. He had a vocal precision and physical power and grace that at moments seemed almost supernatural." Harry Belafonte, Morgan Freeman, Viola Davis, Whoopi Goldberg, Lupita Nyong'o, Halle Berry, Ava DuVernay, Oprah Winfrey, Octavia Spencer, Jeffrey Wright, Giancarlo Esposito, Quincy Jones, Michael Eisner, Ron Howard and others also paid tribute. Broadway paid tribute when its theaters dimmed their lights on January 19, 2022, at 7:45 pm ET. Sidney, a documentary film about Poitier's life and legacy by Reginald Hudlin, was released on September 23, 2022.
Calvin Ronald Wilson lived from March 10, 1942, in Portsmouth Virginia to November 6, 2022, in Suffolk, Virginia. He was the husband of my 4th cousin Barbara Jean Powell (b. 1945. Barbara Powell is related to the Claud family). Calvin Ronald Wilson married Barbara Jean Powell on October 2, 1965, in Portsmouth, Virginia. Calvin's parents are Joseph C. Wilson and Lucy R. Wilson. He attended both Portsmouth and Chesapeake schools. Also, he graduated from I.C. Norcom High School (in Portsmouth) in 1961. Clavin joined the United States Air Force and graduated from Norfolk State University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics. He worked at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard as an Electrician and Supervisor. He married Barbara Powell for 55 years. He is known for his sense of humor, loving the Norfolk States Spartans, and being a fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers too. Calvin Ronald Wilson and Barbara Jean Powell have 5 children whose names are: Calvin Ranaldo Wilson (b. 1965. His wife is Pamela Cheri Jackson Wilson who was born in 1966), Matthan Cornelius Wilson (b. 1967. His wife is Niricoel Wilson), Kimberly Dawn Wilson (b. 1972. Her husband is Robert Thompson), Anah Wynn (b. 1969. She is married to Quentin Ray Wynn who was born in 1969), and Omega Julian Wilson (b. 1974. He is married to Lisa Diann Robinson). Calvin Ronald Wilson's grandchildren are Whitney (who is with Jason), Ashley, Clavin (who is with Cam), Daniel, DaeJaun, Angel Rebekah, Rayna, Chase, Rachel, Allison, and Christopher. He has 5 great-grandchildren too.
Vernell Peeples Jr. lived from July 15, 1942, to July 21, 2021. He was the son of Bettie and Vernell Peeples Sr. As a member of the Peeples family, Vernell Franklin Peeples Jr. was my 2nd cousin. He passed away at the Sentara Hospice House in Virginia Beach, Virginia. He was educated in the Portsmouth public school system. He later moved to New York City to start a new chapter of his life. Later, he met the love of his life in NYC named Olivia Jennie Lindsey (b. 1944). They married in New York City in 1976, and Olivia's nickname was called "Libby." They would start a family and be married for many decades. Their two children are Shelton N. Peeples (b. 1969. He is married to Teri Nicole Harris Peeples who was born in 1969. They live in Bayonne, New Jersey), and Darnell Peeples (b. 1970. He is married to Monique Peeples and the couple lives in Hiram, Georgia). Vernell Peeples Jr. worked hard in the hospitality sector. He had a great sense of humor. Vernell Peeples Jr. has the following siblings of Dollie Wells of Virginia Beach, Virginia, Geraldine Epps (who is married to Robert Epps) of Chesapeake, Virginia, Elsie Whitehead (who is married to Moses Whitehead) of Chesapeake, Virginia, Carolyn Parker (who is married to Larry Parker) of Chesapeake, Virginia, Sharon Sampson of Portsmouth, Virginia, James Wilson Peeples (who is married to Barbara Peeples) of Norfolk, Virginia, Matthew Peeples (of Virginia Beach, Virginia), Lloyd Henry Peeples (1944-1947), and Milton Frank Peeples (who is married to Sheri Peeples) of Portsmouth, Virginia, and the late Bettie Jean Boone.
Kim Denise Kuykendall Smith is my cousin too who is related to the Peeples family. She lived from September 4, 1958, to November 20, 2021. She passed away in Norfolk, Virginia. She was born to the parents of Dollie Mae Peeples Wells and the late Ronald Dean Kuykendall. She graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in 1976 in Portsmouth, Virginia. She attended Norfolk State University and worked for the federal government as an inventory management specialist at the Fleet and Industrial Supply Center in Norfolk, Virginia for over 32 years. She also worked part-time at QVC in Virginia Beach. She loved to read books and worked at the library during her retirement. Her niece is my cousin Kourtney D. Cagle- Johnson (she is married to Jordan Cagle-Johnson) and Keith Jamal Pulliam. Her great niece is Charlotte Lynn Cagle-Johnson.
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