Claudia McNeil

Claudia Mae McNeil was born on August 13, 1917, in Baltimore, Maryland, to Marvin Spencer McNeil, who was Black, and Annie Mae McNeil, an Apache woman. The family relocated to New York City shortly after her birth, and McNeil was raised by her mother following her father's departure from the family. At twelve years old, she began working for The Heckscher Foundation for Children, where she met a Jewish couple who later adopted her; through that relationship she became fluent in Yiddish. She converted to Catholicism in 1952 and was considered devout, though she maintained deep respect for Judaism and carried both the Talmud and the Bible with her throughout her life.

It was Ethel Waters who advised McNeil to pursue acting. She made her New York stage debut in 1953, understudying Jacqueline Andre in the role of Tituba in The Crucible at the Martin Beck Theater, first going on in the role in mid-March of that year. Her Broadway career spanned from 1953 to 1969 and included productions such as The Wrong Way Light Bulb, Her First Roman, and Something Different.

The role that defined McNeil's career was Lena Younger, the matriarch at the center of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, which she originated on Broadway in 1959. The performance earned her a Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a Play in 1960. She reprised the role in the 1961 film adaptation, appearing opposite Sidney Poitier, and received both a Golden Globe Award nomination and a BAFTA Award nomination for that screen performance. New York Times journalist Eric Pace described her screen presence as "stolid, voluminous and serene" in her portrayal of a mother seeking a respectable home for her family. McNeil herself reflected on her deep identification with the part, noting that there was a time when she acted the role but eventually came to live it. In 1981, she returned to the material once more in a production of Raisin, the musical adaptation of the play, presented by Equity Library Theater.

McNeil received a second Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a Play in 1963 for her work in Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright. Her film work extended beyond A Raisin in the Sun to include The Last Angry Man in 1959, There Was a Crooked Man... in 1970, and Black Girl in 1972. On television, she appeared in The DuPont Show of the Month in 1957, The Nurses in 1962, Profiles in Courage in 1965, and Roots: The Next Generations in 1979. In 1980, she and Sam Levene starred together in a summer stock and national tour of Henry Denker's comedy Horowitz & Mrs. Washington.

McNeil married William Henry Smith at the age of nineteen, describing him as a very wonderful man; they had two sons together before his death in World War II. Both sons were reportedly killed in the Korean War. Her second marriage, to Herman McCoy, ended in divorce in 1964 after two years. McNeil retired from performing in 1983 and moved into the Actors' Fund Nursing Home in Englewood, New Jersey, two years later. She died there on November 25, 1993, at the age of seventy-six, from complications related to diabetes.