Actor-director Melvin Van Peebles died on Tuesday, September 21, 2021. His son, actor-director Mario Van Peebles, announced his passing on social media. Van Peebles was 89 years old.

“Dad knew that Black images matter,” Mario Van Peebles wrote in a statement. “If a picture is worth a thousand words, what was a movie worth? We want to be the success we see, thus we need to see ourselves being free. True liberation did not mean imitating the colonizer’s mentality. It meant appreciating the power, beauty and interconnectivity of all people.”

In addition to acting and directing, Van Peebles was a playwright, novelist, and composer. His early film contributions were in the Blaxploitation genre, creating and staring in the film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song.

He was born on August 21, 1932 in Chicago, got a BA in literature from Ohio Wesleyan University in ’54, then spent three years serving in the Air Force.

He joined the entertainment industry in 1957 by writing and directing the short films, Three Pickup Men for Herrick and Sunlight. His work as a director included the early ‘70s films The Story of a Three-Day Pass and Don’t Play Us Cheap (both of which he also wrote), and Watermelon Man.

As an actor, Van Peebles had early roles in Watermelon Man, Jaws: The Revenge, the Sonny Spoon TV show, and Identity Crisis. His work in the ‘90s included In the Heat of the Night, Boomerang, Last Action Hero, Living Single, and The Shining miniseries. He had later roles in Time of Her Time, Girlfriends, All My Children, Peeples, and Armed.