Ellen Holly, accomplished, barrier-breaking actress

Ellen Holly& Credit:& Courtesy of publicist Cheryl Duncan by& Herb Boyd, Amsterdam News As many of you know, this column each week is dedicated to rescuing rather obscure but remarkable Black Americans from obscurity. There have, however, been several occasions when a celebrity dies and we can depart from our normal process to let an obituary do double duty for the paper. The death of actress Ellen Holly on December 6 in the Bronx at Calvary Hospital, at 92, provides such a moment for reflection and condolence. First and foremost, Holly was a phenomenal actress whose role on the ABC soap opera, “One Life to Live,” was a breakthrough for an African American in a leading role on daytime television. She was born on January 16, 1931, in New York City, and “at the age of seventeen,” she noted in her memoir,& One Life: The Autobiography of an African American Actress,& “I moved into a world of professionals: actors, singers, dancers, playwrights, and poets. Each nursed some vision that could not be realized in the white world but could be nurtured in the hothouse of exploding Black creative energy…” It was during this period that she met Harry Belafonte. When...