Beah Richards (July 12, 1920 – September 14, 2000) was an American actress with a long career on stage, screen and television. She was also a poet, playwright and author. July 12 is the 193rd day (194th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 172 days remaining. ... 1920 (MCMXX) was a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar) // Events January January 7 - Forces of Russian White admiral Kolchak surrender in Krasnoyarsk. ... September 14 is the 257th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (258th in leap years). ... This article is about the year 2000. ...

Born Beulah Richardson in Vicksburg, Mississippi, her mother was a seamstress and PTA advocate and her father was a Baptist minister. In 1948 she graduated from Dillard University in New Orleans and two years later moved to New York City. Her career started to take off in 1955 when she portrayed an eighty-four-year-old-grandmother in the off-Broadway show Take A Giant Step. She often played the role of a mother or grand-mother, and continued acting her entire life. She appeared in the original Broadway productions of Purlie Victorious, The Miracle Worker, and A Raisin in the Sun. Vicksburg is a city located in Warren County, Mississippi, 234 miles (377 km) north by west of New Orleans on the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers. ... PTA may refer to: Parent-Teacher Association, a voluntary organisation bringing together parents and teachers plasma thromboplastin antecedent, another name for Factor XI Preferential Trade Arrangement This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... A Baptist is a member of a Baptist church. ... Dillard University is a private, faith based liberal arts college in New Orleans, Louisiana. ... New Orleans is the largest city in the state of Louisiana, United States of America. ... Nickname The Big Apple, The Capital of the World [1], Gotham Government Counties (Boroughs) Bronx (The Bronx) New York (Manhattan) Queens (Queens) Kings (Brooklyn) Richmond (Staten Island) Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R) Geographical characteristics Area  - Total  - Land  - Water 1,214. ... 1955 (MCMLV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Off-Broadway plays or musicals are performed in New York City in smaller theatres than Broadway, but larger than Off-Off-Broadway, productions. ... Broadway theatre is often considered the highest professional form of theatre in the United States. ... The Miracle Worker is a play by William Gibson based upon Helen Kellers autobiography, The Story of my Life. ... A Raisin in the Sun is a play from 1959 by Lorraine Hansberry. ...

Richards was nominated for a Tony award for her 1965 performance in James Baldwin's The Amen Corner. She also received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Sidney Poitier's mother in the 1967 film Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Other notable movie performances include Hurry Sundown, The Great White Hope, and Beloved. What is popularly called the Tony Award (formally, the Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre) is an annual award celebrating achievements in live American theater, including musical theater, primarily honoring productions on Broadway in New York. ... 1965 (MCMLXV) was a common year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1965 calendar). ... James Baldwin, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1955 James Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an African-American novelist, short story writer, and essayist, known for his novel Go Tell it on the Mountain. ... The Academy Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role is one of the awards given to people working in the motion picture industry by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; nominations are made by Academy members who are actors and actresses. ... Sidney Poitier Sir Sidney Poitier, KBE (born February 20, 1927) is a Bahamian-American actor. ... 1967 (MCMLXVII) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar (the link is to a full 1967 calendar). ... Guess Whos Coming to Dinner is a 1967 award-winning comedy-drama movie starring Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Sidney Poitier, and Katharine Houghton // Plot summary The movie concerns Joanna Drayton, a young white American woman (Houghton) who has had a whirlwind romance with Dr. Prentice (Poitier), an African American... Hurry Sundown is a 1967 film starring Michael Caine. ... The Great White Hope is a 1970 film which tells the fictionalized life story of boxing champion Jack Johnson (here called Jack Jefferson). ... Toni Morrisons Pulitzer-Prize-winning 1987 work Beloved (novel) was released as a Hollywood film in 1998. ...

She made numerous guest television appearances including recurrent roles on The Bill Cosby Show Designing Women and ER (as Dr. Peter Benton's mother.) She was the winner of two Emmy Awards. The Bill Cosby Show was a sitcom that aired for two seasons on NBC from 1969 until 1971. ... Designing Women was a U.S. television sitcom that centered around the working and personal lives of four women in an interior design firm in Atlanta, Georgia. ... ER is a long-running serial drama created by novelist Michael Crichton and set primarily in the emergency room of County General Hospital in Chicago, Illinois. ... An Emmy Award. ...

In the last year of her life, Richards was the subject of a documentary created by actress Lisa Gay Hamilton. The documentary Beah: A Black Woman Speaks was created from over 70 hours of their conversations. The film won the Grand Jury Prize at the AFI Film Festival. Lisa Gay Hamilton (born March 25, 1964 in Los Angeles, California) is an American actress most well known for her role as attorney Rebecca Washington on the ABC legal drama The Practice. ...

Beah Richards died from emphysema in her hometown of Vicksburg, Mississippi at the age of 80.

External links

• Beah Richards at the IMDB
• Photos