Carol Diann (or Diahann) Johnson, born in The Bronx, New York, is the birth name of award-winning singer and actress Diahann Carroll (1935–2019), who in 1962 won a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical for her part as a high-fashion model in the Broadway musical No Strings and in the late 1960s became the first black American with a middle-class lead, in the television sitcom Julia, for which she received a Golden Globe Award for Best TV Star—Female (1968), becoming the first African American to win the Golden Globe, and an Emmy nomination (1969). Her films included Carmen Jones (1954), Claudine (1974), and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1979). In 1997, she became the first black woman with a celebrity signature line of clothing. In 2011, she was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame. Her most recent work included guest appearances on television's Grey's Anatomy. She died in Los Angeles, California, in 2019.
