- Contributed
Cicely Tyson is to be honoured at the 2006 Black Movie Awards, airing Wednesday night at 9 on TNT.

Jay Bobbin, Tribune Media Services

For Cicely Tyson, it's a good thing both she and Tyler Perry said 'yes'. The Emmy-winning star of the landmark 1974 TV movie, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, agreed to appear in Perry's films Diary of a Mad Black Woman and Madea's Family Reunion. In turn, Perry signed up with TNT to host the 2006 Black Movie Awards upon learning Tyson would be given the Distinguished Career Achievement Award.

"He says when he heard I was receiving it, he accepted," the ever-dignified Tyson says with a laugh. "He wasn't there last year, and I thought it was a class-A event. I told him what I thought he missed, and he said when he was asked (to host this year), he wasn't sure it would fit into his schedule - but he added that when he learned I was a recipient, he hurried up and said 'yes'."

TNT televises the ceremony Wednesday, October 18. To be taped tomorrow night at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles, the ceremony is significant for Tyson in many ways. Musing that "everyone knew but me" about her award first, she recalls when she finally got the news, "I was rendered speechless, and that's primarily because last year, the award was given to Sidney Poitier. For me to receive an award following Sidney is the most incredible thing that could happen to me."

And that's saying a lot. Tyson also received an Oscar nomination for the 1972 film Sounder, another Emmy for Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (1994), and a record 13 NAACP Image Awards for projects including The Marva Collins Story (1981), Mama Flora's Family (1998) and last year's Diary of a Mad Black Woman.

"It's so important, during the course of your years in this business called show business, that someone recognises your efforts were not in vain," Tyson reflects. "Not only that, but it projects some kind of history to young people of who came before them and what those people were able to contribute to their present state."