Cicely Tyson is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 actress. A successful stage actress, Tyson is also known for her Oscar-nominated role in the film Sounder

Sounder (film)

Sounder is a 1972 film starring Cicely Tyson, Paul Winfield, Kevin Hooks, Carmen Mathews, Taj Mahal, Eric Hooks and Janet MacLachlan. It was adapted by Lonne Elder III and directed by Martin Ritt from the 1970 Newbery Medal-winning novel Sounder by William H...

and the television movies The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman is a 1971 novel by Ernest J. Gaines. The story depicts the struggles of African Americans as seen through the eyes of the narrator, a woman named Jane Pittman...

and Roots

Roots (TV miniseries)

Roots is a 1977 American television miniseries based on Alex Haley's fictional novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family. Roots received 36 Emmy Award nominations, winning nine. It also won a Golden Globe and a Peabody Award. It received unprecedented Nielsen ratings with the finale still...

.
Tyson was born and raised in Harlem, New York, the daughter of Theodosia, a domestic, and William Tyson, a pushcart operator. Her parents were emigrants from the island of Nevis

Nevis

Nevis is an island in the Caribbean Sea, located near the northern end of the Lesser Antilles archipelago, about 350 km east-southeast of Puerto Rico and 80 km west of Antigua. The 93 km² island is part of the inner arc of the Leeward Islands chain of the West Indies...

 of the Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis

Saint Kitts and Nevis

The Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis , located in the Leeward Islands, is a federal two-island nation in the West Indies. It is the smallest sovereign state in the Americas, in both area and population....

 in the West Indies

Caribbean

The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...

; Her father arrived in New York City at the age of 21 and was processed at Ellis Island

Ellis Island

Ellis Island in New York Harbor was the gateway for millions of immigrants to the United States. It was the nation's busiest immigrant inspection station from 1892 until 1954. The island was greatly expanded with landfill between 1892 and 1934. Before that, the much smaller original island was the...

 on August 4, 1919.