A dedicated stage and screen performer – and an African-American woman who earned degrees from Bard College, London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and the Univ. of Minnesota in the 1960s – she won the Emmy for playing Matilda, the wife of Chicken George in the Alex Haley miniseries. She was nominated for a second Emmy for Backstairs at the White House and co-starred in the Oprah Winfrey production The Women of Brewster Place.