Cicely Tyson Has New Role As A Teacher Versatile Actress Chooses To Use ‘Her Position As A Platform’

Actress Cicely Tyson peered into the bright lights, straining to see the man at the back of the banquet room who said he had a gift for her.

She could hear his voice.

“I want to thank you for the positive images you have given that remind me of my mom and my grandmothers,” Jeffrey Carrol said into the microphone.

Tyson beckoned him forward.

Dreadlocks bouncing, Carrol strode to the podium, handed Tyson a package of pasta and hugged her with such emotion that he lifted her off her feet.

Afterward, Tyson smiled broadly as she straightened the jacket of her tangerine suit.

“Moments like that make me realize I’ve been on the right track,” she said.

Known for selecting roles that portray strong African-American women, Tyson explained why she uses “her position as a platform” as the guest speaker Monday at an annual fund-raising luncheon.

About 1,600 women and men packed the Spokane Ag Trade Center. They donated at least $100 each to 14 county agencies selected by the Women Helping Women Fund.

Tyson, daughter of Caribbean immigrants, grew up in East Harlem. She typed, then modeled before launching an acting career that worried her protective mother. Sources place her age between 53 and 58.

In 1963, she became the first black with a regular dramatic role on television. The show was “East Side, West Side.”

After her Oscar nomination for the 1972 movie “Sounder,” Tyson didn’t work for six years. She rejected script after script she felt exploited blacks.

She assumed responsibility for educating people, she said, people like a reporter who admitted she never realized a black couple could have the loving relationship the characters in “Sounder” did.

Such ignorance haunted her.

She relied on her gut reaction to scripts, she said. “Either my skin tingles or my stomach churns.”

The skin-tinglers were rare.

“I became known as the actress who works first every six years, then every four years, then every two years,” she said. “Last year, I did three projects.”

Tyson won Emmy awards for “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” and “The Oldest Confederate Widow Tells All.” She played abolitionist Harriet Tubman, Coretta Scott King and the mother of Kunta Kinte in Alex Haley’s “Roots.”

On Monday, Tyson mesmerized her audience as she read poetry by Mari Evans, Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, James Weldon Johnson and Nikki Giovanni.

She said the recent deaths of black actresses Butterfly McQueen, Rosalind Cash and Roxie Roker forced her to ponder her own mortality and to begin “a period of agonizing reappraisal of what direction my life is going to take from here on.”

After the luncheon, Carrol looked forward to telling his children about meeting Tyson. During his own times of struggle, he said, he drew strength from Tyson’s acting. Her roles reminded him of his mother, Dorothy Williams, and his grandmothers, Edna Bell and Annie Mae Truvillion.

“She has a faith in God and a positive respect for black men and women,” said Carrol, construction supervisor for Spokane’s Habitat for Humanity. “I always knew I’d meet her and today was the day.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo