@turtlekiosk The problem is people are bored with the modern minimalist aesthetic.
80's - 00's had a very optimistic excited energy about building towards a scifi future that everyone was a part of.
Lately it has felt like a flattened corporate future that people don't feel invited to.
There was a time in America when being gay wasn’t just dangerous — it was illegal. Careers could vanish overnight.
Roles revoked. Reputations destroyed.
But in the middle of that fear stood Cicely Tyson — not just a groundbreaking actress, but a sanctuary.
In 1976, on the set of the MLK miniseries King, actor Paul Winfield found the courage to tell Tyson the truth: he was gay… and terrified. His ex-boyfriend had threatened to out him — a threat that, in Hollywood, could end everything.
Tyson didn’t judge.
She offered a home.
“Come live with me,” she told him.
And he did.
Fans assumed they were a couple. They never corrected anyone until the project was finished — because silence was safety. Tyson chose protection over publicity.
But Paul Winfield wasn’t the only one.
Tyson had already opened her home and her heart to Earle Hyman — known years later as Grandpa Huxtable — and his partner Rolf Sirnes, who would remain his great love for half a century. She gave them privacy. Dignity. Safety. A place to simply be.
Hyman later introduced Winfield to architect Charles Gillan Jr.
Winfield and Gillan built a life together for 30 years — until cancer took Gillan in 2002. At the funeral, Tyson and Hyman stood beside Winfield, holding him up in grief.
Paul Winfield would finally come out publicly after losing the man he loved. And when he did, Cicely Tyson was still there — exactly as she had been since the day he whispered his truth.
Cicely Tyson once said:
“You don’t get to tell me who I can be friends with. We are all God’s children.”
She didn’t need parades or headlines.
She didn’t perform allyship.
She practiced it.
Behind closed doors, when cameras were gone, when acceptance was scarce — she made space.
Space to breathe.
Space to exist.
Space to live without fear.
Hollywood knows Cicely Tyson as a legend of stage and screen — the woman who transformed Black representation in film.
But for many closeted Black actors, she was something even greater:
A protector.
A sister.
A lifeline.
Long before “inclusion” became a slogan, Cicely Tyson lived it — one open door at a time.