The memorial service Tuesday came per day after countless admirers of this pioneering Black celebrity lined up outside the church to get a public seeing . Some said they’d come from as far as Atlanta or Los Angeles to be there.
Also in attendance because of the ceremony are gospel singer Bebe Winans and Valerie Simpson of their duo Ashford & Simpson.
Throughout the service, the sun broke through the clouds and the temperature rose past 40 for the first time from the snowy city over a week.
Tyson expired Jan. 28. The New York-born celebrity was 96.
Tyson was the first Black woman to have a recurring part in a dramatic television series, the 1963 drama”East Side, West Side.” Her performance as a sharecropper’s wife in the 1972 film”Sounder” cemented her stardom and earned her an Oscar nomination.
She proceeded to win 2 Emmy Awards for enjoying the 110-year-old former slave in the 1974 television play”The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” and another Emmy 20 decades after for”Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All.”
At age 88, Tyson won a Tony Award for its revival of Horton Foote’s”The Trip to Bountiful” in 2013. President Barack Obama awarded her the Medal of Freedom at 2016.
