Cicely Tyson passed away: An actress who Shattered Stereotypes, Pioneering “Sounder” Oscar Nominee & “The Autobiography Of Miss Jane Pittman” Emmy Winner, “A Woman called Moses.” She Was 96

Her latest role Ophelia Harkness in How To Get Away With Murders is perhaps most young people know her from but she had already made history before starring as [Anna Harkness’ mother.] Annalise Keating

Whether one is familiar with her work or not; there aren’t very many in the entertainment industry who can say they stuck to what they believed in regardless of the cost.

Ms. Tyson, maintained the positive image of African American women through out her long career. Unwilling to comprise cost her much work, but it paid off was building a bridge so that main-stream America got to see African American women as they truly are, not as often portrayed in movies and books. She refused to portrayed characters that were demeaning to black people, especially black women.

“The Autobiography Of Miss Jane Pittman” is the story an a woman born in slavery who lived to see the Civil Rights’ Movements. The original iconic scene of Miss Pittman slowly walking to the water fountain to take a sip of water from a faucet which she would have been killed for drinking out of a mere twenty years earlier is a scourge America is still living with but in a different way.

It’s told through the eyes of someone who lived what we read about or what some of us find too disturbing to read about.

“Stunning. I know of no black novel about the South that excludes quite the same refreshing mix of wit and wrath, imagination and indignation, misery and poetry. And I can recall no more memorable female character in Southern fiction since Lena of Faulkner’s Light In August than Miss Jane Pittman.” — Josh Greenfeld, Life

This is a later edition.

This is one of the most iconic movie scenes of the Civil Rights era.