Roxie Roker

Roxie Albertha Roker (August 28, 1929 – December 2, 1995) was an American actress born in Miami, Florida, who built a career spanning stage, television, and film. Her father, Albert Roker, was a porter originally from Andros, the Bahamas, and her mother, Bessie Roker (née Mitchell), was a Georgia native who worked as a domestic. Roker grew up in Brooklyn, New York.

Roker pursued drama at Howard University, where she studied under drama teachers Anne Cooke Reid and Owen Dodson. Among her fellow students in the university's theater troupe, the Howard Players, were novelist Toni Morrison, actress Zaida Coles, stage director and playwright Shauneille Perry, and actor Graham Brown. In 1949, Roker toured with the Howard Players to Norway in a trip sponsored by the United States Department of State and supported by Eleanor Roosevelt.

She launched her professional career with the Negro Ensemble Company and went on to become an established stage actress. Her Broadway career extended from 1973 to 1986 and included credits in The River Niger and Legend. In The River Niger, she portrayed Mattie Williams, a role that earned her a nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play at the 28th Tony Awards in 1974. That same year she also received an Obie Award.

Roker became widely recognized for her portrayal of Helen Willis on the CBS sitcom The Jeffersons, in which she and actor Franklin Cover played one of the first Caucasian–African-American married couples to appear in a regular role on prime-time television. She also appeared in the television miniseries Roots and in the film Claudine, and guest-starred on numerous television programs from the 1970s through the 1990s, including Murder, She Wrote, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Punky Brewster, Hangin' with Mr. Cooper, A Different World, 227, Beat the Clock, $weepstake$, and ABC Afterschool Specials, as well as Stone in the River starring Hal Miller for NBC. In addition to her acting work, Roker served as a reporter for WNEW-TV in New York during the 1970s and hosted a public affairs program for the station called Inside Bed-Stuy, which focused on the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant.

In her personal life, Roker married television producer Sy Kravitz in 1962. The couple had a son, singer-songwriter and actor Lenny Kravitz, born May 26, 1964, and divorced in 1985. Lenny Kravitz's daughter, actress Zoë Kravitz, is Roker's granddaughter. Roker and television weather anchor Al Roker are first cousins once removed. She was also cited by the city of Los Angeles for her community work as a children's advocate. Roker died in Los Angeles on December 2, 1995, of breast cancer at the age of 66.