Cicely Tyson Dies: Pioneering ‘Sounder’ Oscar Nominee & ‘Autobiography Of Miss Jane Pittman’ Emmy Winner Was 96

“I have managed Miss Tyson’s career for over 40 years, and each year was a privilege and blessing,” Thompson said in a statement. “Cicely thought of her new memoir as a Christmas tree decorated with all the ornaments of her personal and professional life. Today she placed the last ornament, a Star, on top of the tree.”

That role came two years after Tyson’s powerhouse performance in Sounder, about a Depression-era sharecropper family that must deal a serious personal crisis. She earned an Oscar nom for the performance but lost to Liza Minnelli for Cabaret.

Tyson received her third Emmy for The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (1994) and also was nominated for her performances in Roots, King, Sweet Justice, The Marva Collins Story and A Lesson Before Dying.

Born on December 19, 1924, the native New Yorker launched her TV career in 1951 with roles ranging from Naked City, I Spy and Mission: Impossible to Gunsmoke, The F.BI. and a co-starring gig opposite George C. Scott in the mid-’60s CBS drama East Side/West Side. Three decades later, Tyson landed another series-regular role in the NBC legal drama Sweet Justice, playing a longtime civil rights warrior alongside Melissa Gilbert and Ronny Cox. It lasted one season in 1994-95.

Tyson also appeared in a number of Broadway plays, most of which had brief runs. Most recently she starred opposite James Earl Jones in two-hander The Gin Game and with Cuba Gooding Jr. and Vanessa Williams in Horton Foote’s The Trip to Bountiful. She won a lead actress Tony Award for the latter and would reprise her role as Mrs. Carrie Watts for the 2014 telefilm, earning an Emmy nom for that performance.

More recently, she appeared on the small screen on such popular drama series as Law & Order: SVU, House of Cards and Madam Secretary.