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Research dossier · People & Ideas

Howard Rollins

American actor (1950–1996)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 11, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

Howard Ellsworth Rollins Jr. was an American stage, film and television actor. He was best known for his role as Andrew Young in 1978's King, George Haley in the 1979 miniseries Roots: The Next Generations, Coalhouse Walker Jr. in the 1981 film Ragtime, as civil rights activist Medgar Evers in PBS' American Playhouse production of For Us the Living: The Medgar Evers Story in 1983, Captain Davenport in the 1984 film A Soldier's Story, and as Virgil Tibbs on the NBC/CBS television crime drama In the Heat of the Night (1988–1995).

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Howard Rollins” as american actor (1950–1996). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1978, 1979, 1981, 1983—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Howard, Rollins and American can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american actor (1950–1996). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The first chronological checks are 1978, 1979, 1981 and 1983.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Howard Rollins”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Howard Rollins primary sources, Howard Rollins archive and Howard research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Howard Rollins”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Howard Rollins” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.