What happened to Cicely Tyson? Hollywood Icon passes away at 96

On Thursday, January 28, 2021, many fans were heartbroken when the news of the death of Cecily Tyson surfaced on the internet. The pioneering Hollywood Icon was known for portraying strong and formidable African-American women in her film and television performances. Tyson’s remarkable career spanned for over seven decades, and many a time she had found herself out of work, because of her unwillingness to portray characters that were demeaning to the African American people. Tyson passed away at the age of 96 and the news of her demise was announced by her longtime manager and friend, Larry Thompson. Find out what happened to Cicely Tyson?

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What happened to Cicely Tyson?

The cause of Cicely Tyson's death has not been revealed yet. While announcing the news of her unfortunate demise, her manager Thomson did not reveal any other details about the same. According to a report in The New York Times, Tyson had won three Emmy and several awards from civil rights groups over the course of her lustrous career. She became the oldest Tony recipient at age 88, which she won for her Broadway show The Trip to Bountiful. At the age of 93, Tyson was given an honorary Oscar and was inducted in the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 2018.

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Cicely Tyson’s commendable work

Tyson began appearing in Broadway plays and television episodes as well as minor movie roles in the 1960s. This was before she got her breakthrough role as Portia in Carson McCuller’s The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Her next remarkable role came in the 1972 film, Sounder, when she finally found what she had been looking for, a leading role with dignity.

Source: 20th Century Fox (Website)

In the film, she played Rebecca, the wife of a Lousiana sharecropper who is imprisoned in 1933 for stealing food for his children. The distressed wife, Rebecca rises to the challenge and begins cleaning houses, tilling fields, sweltering under the sun in a worn dress and braided cornrows. Rebecca is a black woman whose grace and beauty lies in toil and poverty.

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Did Cicely Tyson have children?

The report in NYT further reveals that Tyson got married to Lenneth Franklin at the age of 18, in 1942. Her divorce decree revealed that her husband had abandoned her after merely eighteen months of marriage before it was formally dissolved in 1956. Tyson then got married to Miles Davis in 1981, but the marriage was a tumultuous one, as Davis had been addicted to cocaine. The pair parted ways in 1988.

Very little is known about Tyson’s personal life. In the past, many media outlets have stated that Tyson had no children, but Tyson had written a memoir dedicating it to her daughter, whom she calls, Joan in the book, Just As I Am. The report states that in the memoir Tyson delves deeper into the birth of her daughter and childhood. However, not much is know about Cicely Tyson's daughter.

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