#LENNY KRAVITZ GODSON HOW TO#

Go back to the music video “Again” from 2000. There is depth to his look-a natural laidback appeal that is so far from try-hard. Which explains the nearly universal outpouring of love for her this past week.But there’s far more to Kravitz’s style, and I’m not just talking about the multiple ear piercings, stacked like beautiful, tiny wedding bands on his lobes.

When talking about The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman-in which she played a 110-year-old woman who’d been born into slavery-Tyson said “ see and accept history from Miss Jane’s point of view… than from someone younger.” Holding this special place in the hearts of a generation of white Americans and countless more African Americans, she feels unique among actors. In 1974’s Sounder-which gave many their first (and perhaps only) glimpse of the indignities suffered under Jim Crow-Tyson’s bare, beautiful performance made us witness the will-born of cynicism and necessity-that generations of black mothers had to summon when dealing with the white power structure. With early ‘70s America stumbling through its first attempts at racial consciousness, it’s no overstatement to say that Cicely Tyson’s roles AND talent made her white America’s first Black History teacher. She had a Pioneer’s Principles-choosing roles that “made an impact on the world, about us as a race of people.” And a Historian’s Heart. Swipe through 4 decades of the one-time model’s looks, and I challenge you to name another actress in recent memory who so consistently slayed it! She had Style!-though it was little celebrated outside the pages of Essence and Ebony. And a Dazzling Inner Beauty (that never could be). She had a Dazzling Outer Beauty (that was easy to overlook). ( Witness her response to Cece Winan’s gospel tribute at the 2015 Kennedy Center Honors.) Asked, “What legacy will you leave?” while promoting her memoir, Just As I Am (released a week before her death), Tyson answered, “One cannot leave anything they do not have.”īelieving that roles could change the culture, she showed us what it meant to have Faith in the Work. One that earned her-in addition to a Tony-2 Drama Desk Awards 3 Emmy Awards (and 16 nominations), a Best Actress Oscar nomination (for Sounder) and an honorary Oscar a Peabody Award a Kennedy Center Honor and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

That her relatively small output should have such a lasting effect on audiences is a testament to her rare talent. Medea, perhaps? The Glass Menagerie’s Amanda Wingfield? The Mother Superior in Doubt or Agnes of God? Epatha Merkerson in William Inge’s Come Back, Little Sheba, I wonder what other roles Tyson might have played if producers during the ‘70’s, 80’s or ‘90’s were as willing as today’s to step outside traditional casting norms. Having seen Angela Basset play Lady Macbeth and S. It’s worth noting that her Tony-winning role of Carrie Watts in Horton Foote’s The Trip to Bountiful had, until then, been played by white actresses (Lillian Gish on stage and Geraldine Page on-screen). Is it greedy of me to wish there had been more? Winning the Best Actress Tony at age 88 (and the oldest performer to do so), she explained, “I had a burning desire to do more great roles. And with Hollywood’s dismal history of Black representation, I imagine she was offered many. Tyson was proud of the fact that she never took a demeaning or negligible role just for the paycheck.

#LENNY KRAVITZ GODSON HOW TO#

Showing a willful woman in profile, her neck thrust forward like a thoroughbred at the gate, seemingly free of makeup and wearing her hair “natural” (which, I would come to understand, was a politically-charged statement of black female empowerment), the picture symbolizes everything Cicely Tyson was… and would become.Ī celebrated New York stage actress by her mid-thirties, and the first African American to have a recurring role on a TV show, Tyson made only occasional (but always heralded) appearances on the big and small screens (her last playing Viola Davis’ mother on How to Get Away with Murder). (The pair were married from 1981 to ’88.) That this one image-from among my parents’ hundreds of albums-should remain so vivid in my mind speaks volumes. That unnamed beauty first spoke to me from the cover of Miles Davis’ 1967 release, Sorcerer, years before I knew who Tyson was. “A Black queen who showed us how beautiful black is,“ professed godson, Lenny Kravitz-echoing The New York Times, who observed early in her career that, “ passes all of her easy beauty by to give us, at long last, some sense of the profound beauty of millions of Black women.” “A force of nature unto herself,” declared Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Which is why we remember her so joyfully when she came to the end of it. With nearly every picture of Tyson capturing a smile that bathed all around her in sunlight, how could one not? While a pioneer’s path is never easy, she seemed determined to find the joy in travelling that road.

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