Tonea Stewart

Tonea Stewart is an American actress and educator who worked in film and television while also teaching, acting full time only after she retired from education. Born in Greenwood, Mississippi, she entered Jackson State University planning to study medicine, but a school play led her to change course; she went on to earn a doctorate in theater arts from Florida State University. Her first screen role was in the television movie Nightmare in Badham County (1976), and she later appeared in Mississippi Burning (1988) and took the part of Aunt Etta Kibby in In the Heat of the Night between 1991 and 1993. She earned an NAACP Image Award nomination for A Time to Kill (1996), playing Gwen Hailey, and her many television films include I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and The Rosa Parks Story, where she played Johnnie Carr. At Alabama State University she chaired the theater department and became dean before retiring in 2019.