An actress, theatrical producer and casting agent, LeNoire was known for breaking barriers. In the 1930’s Orson Welles directed her in an all-Black version of Macbeth, and she was frequently cast in bit parts in early TV shows. Her Broadway debut was in 1939, in an all-Black production of The Mikado. “It was something,” she once joked. “There were 125 of us, all Black Japanese.”
She founded a casting agency in 1968 to help promote interracial casting. In 1989, the Actors Equity Association established the Rosetta Lenoire Award for her work to broaden participation in theater. “Rosetta did more than dream of a theater with no color bar; she actually built one,” said President Bill Clinton when he awarded her the National Medal of the Arts in 1999. She was best known to modern audiences as “Mother Estelle Winslow” on the Family Matters TV series and “Mother Maybelle Harper” on Gimme a Break. LeNoire died March 17 at the Actors’ Fund Nursing and Retirement Home in Englewood, N.J. She was 90.