Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,008

This is the grave of Herbert Middleton, who was known in his acting career as Taurean Blacque.

Born in 1940 in Newark, Middleton grew up there and became interested in acting at a young age. He started taking acting classes and got into the New Federal Theater, a Black theater project founded in 1970 to promote Black actors as part of the broader civil rights and Black pride movements of the era. A lot of people went through this program–Denzel Washington, Laurence Fishburne, Debbie Allen, Samuel L. Jackson. Middleton created a fancy stage name for himself as Taurean Blacque and started getting supporting roles on TV. The 70s was the great era of Black network television so there was work on all sorts of shows, including Sanford & Son and What’s Happening, but also The Bob Newhart Show. He almost got the role of Venus Flytrap on WKRP but that went to Tim Reid instead.

The reason we remember Blacque today (if we do) is because he got a choice supporting part on Hill Street Blues at Detective Neal Washington. He stayed on the show for its entire run, from 1981-87. He was the 8th listed actor on the show, but in a big ensemble cast like that, there was no shame there. It was a good role and he was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Emmy at least once. I don’t really have any memory of this show–my parents didn’t watch it and I was too young to choose my own TV shows at that time (and even toward the end of the show, a cop drama wasn’t really what a young version of me was going to watch).

After Hill Street Blues ended in 1987, Blacque moved to Atlanta and still worked here and there. He’d do some theater now and then. He got a role in a pilot, but CBS didn’t pick it up. He’d appear as a guest on TV now and then and in a few films. He had a 24 episode run on a show called Savannah in the mid 90s that was on The WB. But he had a second career as an adoptive father. Seriously. He was an evangelical Christian and his version of that manifested itself in using his powers to give kids a chance through adoption. He was unmarried and adoption agencies were resistant to an unmarried man adopting kids at first. He adopted ten kids. He became such a prominent adoption advocate that the Bush administration asked him in 1989 to be a national spokesman for adoption. There was an article in Jet in 1993 about this. He explained that five of the kids were from the same mother. The others were from abused backgrounds and he was trying to raise them with love and compassion. He was super concerned with gangs and wouldn’t let them go to the mall alone.

Blacque died in 2022. He was 82 years old.

Taurean Blacque is buried in Kennedy Memorial Gardens, Cedar Grove, Georgia.

If you would like this series to visit other people from Hill Street Blues, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Or wait, maybe not, they are all either living or have no grave. I did cover Robert Prosky already though. But hey, someday some of them can be covered. Anyway, previous posts in this series are archived here and here.