August 3 …

Jo Marie Payton is an actress, singer, voice performer, producer, and philanthropist whose nearly five-decade career has made her one of the most recognizable Black maternal figures in American television.

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Born on August 3, 1950 in Albany, GA, Payton was the second of nine children. Her family relocated to Opa-locka, FL during her childhood. She graduated from Miami Carol City Senior High School in 1968 before attending Albany State University.

Performing was part of Payton’s life from an early age and she developed as both a singer and actress before moving to California after college. There she joined the national touring company of the musical “Purlie,” which starred Robert Guillaume, and her singing ability helped her obtain professional acting opportunities, and stage and variety work.

Payton’s artistic influences are rooted in the traditions of Black theater, musical performance, television, and family storytelling. Her breakthrough came when she was cast as elevator operator Harriette Winslow on ABC’s Perfect Strangers in 1987. The character proved sufficiently popular that she became the central figure of Family Matters, which premiered in 1989 and developed into one of the most successful Black-family sitcoms in American television history.

As Harriette, Payton portrayed a working mother and wife who was intelligent, outspoken, loving, humorous, professionally accomplished, and capable of disciplining her children while maintaining a strong marriage with Carl Winslow, played by Reginald VelJohnson. Her performance helped place a Black middle-class family at the center of a mainstream network sitcom and offered millions of viewers a depiction of Black family life that emphasized stability, aspiration, humor, generational conflict, education, and community.

Payton’s contemporaries on the series included VelJohnson, Jaleel White, Kellie Shanygne Williams, Darius McCrary, Telma Hopkins, and later Bryton James and Orlando Brown. Her earlier association with “Purlie” connected her to Guillaume, one of the most respected Black performers of his generation, while her later career placed her among influential contemporaries including Phylicia Rashad, Debbie Allen, Jackée Harry, Lynn Whitfield, Loretta Devine, and Alfre Woodard.

Outside Family Matters, Payton appeared in productions including Moesha, The Jamie Foxx Show, The Parkers, and other productions. Her range expanded further through voice acting when she became Suga Mama Proud, the outspoken grandmother on Disney Channel’s The Proud Family.

Payton’s accomplishments have been recognized through both professional nominations and honors connected to her cultural and educational contributions. She received the Alice Award from the National Commission on Working Women in 1990, recognizing her representation of a working woman. She was nominated for multiple NAACP Image Awards, including nominations for Outstanding Performance in a Youth/Children’s Series or Special in 2003, 2005, and 2006. She also received multiple NAMIC Vision Award nominations, and has served as a host of the NAACP Theatre Awards, co-hosting the 15th annual ceremony with Glynn Turman.

A lifelong student, Payton received an honorary doctorate in humanities from Vincennes University and was recognized as an honorary alumnus of Historically Black Colleges and Universities for her commitment to education. In honor of her mother, she has used her public platform for philanthropy and established the Frankie Payton Scholarship Fund at Albany State University, turning her own educational journey into a means of helping others pursue higher education.

Payton’s lasting significance lies in the way she transformed the familiar television-mother role into a vehicle for intelligence, authority, humor, professional independence, and cultural representation. Her continuing performances, educational advocacy, philanthropy, and commitment to historically Black institutions have reinforced a legacy based not solely on celebrity, but on service and representation.

The career of Jo Marie Payton forms part of the broader history of Black American television in which performers helped move Black family life from the margins of mainstream entertainment to its center, while demonstrating that a successful actor could simultaneously be an artist, educator, mentor by example, and advocate for the next generation.