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Beah Richards

Beah Richards brought the authority of a seasoned stage performer to film and television, often playing mothers and grandmothers whose presence carried far beyond the size of the role. Born Beulah Elizabeth Richardson in Vicksburg, Mississippi, on July 12, 1920, she was the daughter of a seamstress and a Baptist minister. She graduated from Dillard University in New Orleans in 1948 and moved to New York City two years later. Her acting career began in 1955 with an off-Broadway production of Take a Giant Step, in which she portrayed an 84-year-old grandmother. Richards went on to appear in the original Broadway productions of Purlie Victorious, The Miracle Worker and A Raisin in the Sun. That theatrical grounding remained central to her work: she could suggest history, resolve and vulnerability without turning a character into a simple type. Her notable film appearances included The Amen Corner, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Hurry Sundown, In the Heat of the Night, The Great White Hope and Beloved. Television gave her an equally broad reach. She played Cynthia Murray Palmer, Alex Haley's grandmother, in Roots: The Next Generations and appeared in series including Sanford and Son, Benson, Designing Women, Murder, She Wrote, The Practice and ER. Richards was also a poet, playwright, writer and activist. Her verse performance piece A Black Woman Speaks, first performed in 1950, examined the role of white women in the oppression of women of color. Its reception helped lead to her becoming a cofounder of the civil rights organization Sojourners for Truth and Justice. Her first play, One Is a Crowd, was written in 1951, though it was not produced until decades later. Across stage and screen, Richards made a career from roles too easily treated as background figures. Her performances instead gave those women weight, individuality and a sense of lives extending beyond the scene.