John Amos, beloved Good Times father and Emmy-nominated Roots star, dies at 84

Long before John Amos became a star playing James Evans, a hard-working father raising a family in the projects on Good Times, the actor had plenty of firsthand experience with the daily grind. During a 1987 commencement speech at Drew University, Amos — who died Aug. 21 at 84, of natural causes, according to his family — looked back on his unlikely path to fame.

"I really didn't decide on an acting career until after I had exhausted just about every other job possibility in the world. I'd been a truck driver, a garbage man," he told the graduates. "And I found I was capable of doing a job society looks on as being demeaning, but to do it with a certain amount of pride."

In a statement Tuesday announcing Amos' death, his son, Kelly Christopher Amos, said, "It is with heartfelt sadness that I share with you that my father has transitioned. He was a man with the kindest heart and a heart of gold… and he was loved the world over. Many fans consider him their TV father. He lived a good life. His legacy will live on in his outstanding works in television and film as an actor."

Born in Newark to Annabelle and John Amos Sr., Amos brought a sense of pride and dignity to all his endeavors, even in failure. His hopes of becoming a player in the American Football League were dashed in 1967 by Kansas City Chiefs coach Hank Stram, who informed then-28-year-old Amos, "Young man, you are not a football player. You are a young man who happens to be playing football."

In a 2012 interview, the actor told the Kansas City Star that he channeled his disappointment into writing a poem, which he then read to the team as a form of farewell. "When [Stram] saw the team's reaction to the poem," Amos recalled, "he said, 'I think you have another calling.'"

Jobs as an advertising copywriter and as staff writer for CBS' 1969 variety series The Leslie Uggams Show followed, which led to Amos' first major TV role, as Gordy the weatherman on CBS' The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

"They could very easily have said, 'Oh, you’ll be a sports announcer,'" Amos told the Archive of American Television in 2015, but "a weatherman with a 19-inch neck" was funnier. Though he was the only African American actor in the ensemble, Amos appreciated that producers Allan Burns and Jim Brooks didn’t treat him like the Black Character. "Most of the other television shows that were on at the time, they felt like they could get cheap laughs by doing race jokes," Amos said. "They never felt that necessary on Mary Tyler Moore. They didn't write down to anybody, and I loved them for that.”

Amos was always openly proud and protective of his Black culture, at a time when Hollywood wasn't known for its sensitivity. After Mary Tyler Moore, he scored the role of James Evans on Good Times, Norman Lear's groundbreaking sitcom about a poor but loving Black family in Chicago struggling to keep their heads above water. The show, a spinoff of Lear's Bea Arthur vehicle Maude, was an immediate hit, but it wasn't long before Amos began to bristle at some of the storytelling. As focus increased on the cocky, catchphrase-spewing character of J.J. (Jimmie Walker), Amos began to clash with Lear and the writers.

"I felt too much emphasis was being put on J.J. and his chicken hat and saying Dy-no-mite every third page," Amos said in 2015. By the end of season 3, tensions were so high Lear decided that Amos was too "disruptive" to remain on the show — a characterization the actor didn't entirely refute. "I wasn't the most diplomatic guy in those days, and they got tired of having their lives threatened over jokes," Amos remembered. "So they said, 'Tell you what, why don't we kill him off, and we’ll all get on with our lives.'"

With the character of James Evans written off in a car accident, Amos didn't have to wait long for his next project. Three weeks after getting fired from Good Times, he got a call from his agent about a television adaptation of Roots, Alex Haley’s best-selling novel about Africans sold into slavery. The actor starred as the adult Kunta Kinte in the 1977 miniseries, which became a nationwide sensation and earned 37 Emmy nominations. For Amos, who began researching his own family’s history in Africa in 1970, exploring the horrors of the slave trade on screen was a deeply personal and moving experience. As he told PEOPLE in 1994, early on in Roots' production, he suffered a seizure after putting on his costume. ''I feel I was being visited by my ancestors,'' said Amos, who earned an Emmy nomination for his performance. ''They wanted to be heard.''

The actor remained a TV staple throughout the '80s and '90s, working steadily as a guest star and in recurring roles on Hunter, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and In the House. (He even reunited with Lear in 1994 for the short-lived CBS comedy 704 Hauser.) Though Amos never really broke through on the big screen, his memorable turn as Eddie Murphy's potential father-in-law in the 1994 hit Coming to America resonates with fans to this day. (Amos once said he was often asked to utter Mr. McDowell’s most famous line — "Son… if you want to keep working here, stay off the drugs" — when going through airport security.)

Twenty-five years after breaking through on Good Times, Amos landed what would become his second signature TV role: The West Wing's Admiral Percy Fitzwallace. As the hawkish chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Bartlet administration, Amos channeled his formidable bearing, gravitas, and humor into the show's highbrow, rapid-fire discussions of everything from "the virtues of a proportional response" to gays in the military to the optics of having a young Black man waiting on the President. ("I'm an old Black man and I wait on the president," Fitzwallace quipped.)

At one point during his five-season West Wing run, Amos arranged a meeting in Washington with then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, who jokingly shared his one quibble with the actor. "He opened the door, he looked at me and said, 'Percy Fitzwallace? What kind of name is that for a brother?'" Amos told the Archive of American Television in 2015. "He had me on that."

Amos worked steadily until his death, most recently starring alongside Pierce Brosnan in The Last Rifleman, a British World War II drama loosely based on the life of D-Day veteran Bernard Jordan, who escaped his care home on the 75th anniversary of the Normandy landing to pay his final respects to those who were lost. Amos will also feature in the Suits spinoff Suits: L.A. playing a version himself, and teamed up with his son to tell the story of his life in their documentary America's Dad.

In addition to his son, Amos is survived by his daughter, producer Shannon Amos. His children were from his first marriage, to artist and equestrian Noel Mickelson, which lasted from 1965 to 1975. Amos was married a second time, to actress Lillian Lehman, from 1978 to 1979.

Though Amos truly did try "just about every other job" besides acting throughout his lifetime, even recording a country album in 2009, his heart belonged to comedy. "I love to laugh. You know when I find something funny, because the world knows — I will laugh as loud as I possibly can," Amos said in 2015. "I think it's the greatest emotion you can evoke from any human being, make them laugh."