Howard E. Rollins Jr.

Howard Rollins Jr. (born in Baltimore, Maryland, October 17, 1950, died December 8, 1996) acted on television playing Andrew Young in the miniseries King (1978) about Martin Luther King, George Hailey in Roots: The Next Generations (1979), the title role in For Us the Living: The Medgar Evers Story (1983). In the TV series In the Heat of the Night (1988-1994) with Carroll O’Connor, he was Virgil Tibbs, the police detective that had been played by Sidney Poitier in the 1967 movie directed by Norman Jewison, He received a double Golden Globe nomination as New Star of the Year and Supporting Actor for Ragtime (1981) directed by Milos Forman from the 1975 novel by E.L. Doctorow, he starred with Denzel Washington in A Soldier’s Story (1984) directed by Norman Jewison from the play by Charles Fuller based on the 1891 novella Billy Budd by Herman Melville.