Diahann Carroll, Oscar-nominated, pioneering actress, dies
Source: AP
NEW YORK (AP) — Diahann Carroll, the Oscar-nominated actress and singer who won critical acclaim as the first black woman to star in a non-servant role in a TV series as “Julia,” has died. She was 84. Carroll’s daughter, Susan Kay, told The Associated Press her mother died Friday in Los Angeles of cancer.
During her long career, Carroll earned a Tony Award for the musical “No Strings” and an Academy Award nomination for “Claudine.” But she was perhaps best known for her pioneering work on “Julia.” Carroll played Julia Baker, a nurse whose husband had been killed in Vietnam, in the groundbreaking situation comedy that aired from 1968 to 1971.
Although she was not the first black woman to star in her own TV show (Ethel Waters played a maid in the 1950s series “Beulah”), she was the first to star as someone other than a servant.
NBC executives were wary about putting “Julia” on the network during the racial unrest of the 1960s, but it was an immediate hit. It had its critics, though, including some who said Carroll’s character, who is the mother of a young son, was not a realistic portrayal of a black American woman in the 1960s.“They said it was a fantasy,” Carroll recalled in 1998. “All of this was untrue. Much about the character of Julia I took from my own life, my family.”
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Damn. I remember watching "Julia".
R.I.P.
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she was in the company of Nichelle Nichols on Star Trek and Bill Cosby on I-Spy. It was a brief window that eventually lead to some exploitative stuff in the '70s and has been hit or miss since.
One of the issues that she also faced was that she wad been in an interracial marriage, which brought her even more grief from "the public" -
(and did the same with her 2 later husbands)
and performed on Broadway in the '50s.
Her re-entry into the television world in a big way. 
"IN COLOR"
We had a 19" "portable" B&W and my dad went out and bought a 20" RCA color TV (on legs..lol). "Julia", "Batman", and the Disney stuff were all in honking over-saturated color. 
Here she is at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963.
James Garner is on the left, Paul Newman is on the right.
