A major force in the new generation of black actors who emerged in the 1960s was Cicely Tyson, who recently passed away at the age of 96. I remember her especially from A Man Called Adam (1966) and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1968).
In A Man Called Adam, she played a civil rights worker and intellectual who hooks up with a self-destructive jazz trumpet player (Sammy Davis Jr.), and tries to straighten him out.
The Adam Johnson character is based loosely on Miles Davis. (I won’t digress into all the ways they’re different.) Interestingly, in real life she was dating Miles, whom she later married in 1981. She’s often credited with helping Davis straighten out his life. (Still, the couple divorced in 1989.)
In The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, she plays the angry, bitter daughter of Dr. Benedict Mady Copeland (Percy Rodriguez). As Portia Copeland, she resents her father’s traditional ways and meek response to the southern town’s virulent racism. The film was shot in Selma. Continue reading
Ethics and Spirituality 