Actress. She was an award-winning 20th-century African-American actress. Born one of three children, her father was a carpenter, and her mother a milliner. After attending local schools, racial discrimination forced her back to the Manhattan High School of the Performing Arts. Following graduation in 1953, she toured with a carnival, returned to New York and began acting with the Greenwich Mews and in show tours while working night jobs to survive. She made her stage debut in George Bernard Shaw's "Major Barbara." She was spared from becoming a permanent keypunch operator at Con Edison with the 1957 role in "Land Beyond the River." In 1958, she appeared in "The Egg and I" and "Another Evening with Harry Stones." In 1959, she appeared in Daniel Petrie's film version of the Lorraine Hansberry play, "A Raisin in the Sun," in 1961, playing the role of Beneatha Younger beside Ruby Dee and Claudia McNeil. In 1964, she was awarded an "OBIE" for "Living Premise" and a Tony nomination for her role in James Baldwin's "Blues for Mr. Charlie" and was then cast opposite Alan Alda in "The Owl and The Pussycat," which would have been unexceptional if portrayed by a white actress, but she stepped into the role with no alteration in the script whatsoever, in a landmark performance introducing integration to the American cinema. In 1968, She garnered two Emmy nominations for "Beyond the Blues" and "Who Do You Kill," She starred with Beau Bridges in "The Landlord" in 1970, portraying "Fanny", a young ghetto mother who teaches her rich-boy white landlord what life is really all about. She performed at the Lincoln Center Theater as Cassandra in "Tiger at the Gates" and the lead in George Bernard Shaw's "St. Joan." She married once and was engaged to director Kurt Baker at the time of death. She was to star opposite James Earl Jones in the production of "Claudine," but her health rapidly declined during the summer of 1973, and she died from a rare cancer, Leiomyosarcoma, at 39 years old.