Notable Deaths in 2026
CBSN
A look back at the esteemed personalities who left us this year, who'd touched us with their innovation, creativity and humanity.
A look back at the esteemed personalities who left us this year, who'd touched us with their innovation, creativity and humanity.
By CBSNews.com senior producer David Morgan. The Associated Press contributed to this gallery.
Demond Wilson (Oct. 13, 1946-Jan. 30, 2026) was best known for playing Redd Foxx's son Lamont on "Sanford and Son" in the early 1970s. Adapated by Norman Lear from the British comedy "Steptoe and Son," about a grumpy and irascible junk man and his aspirational adult offspring, "Sanford and Son" was one of the earliest American sitcoms to feature a predominantly Black cast, and was for many years NBC's top-rated show.
Born in Valdosta, Georgia, Wilson grew up in Harlem. As a child he appeared on radio and danced on the stage of the Apollo Theatre. As a teenager, a ruptured appendix led him to promise to devote himself to God.
He was wounded while serving with the Army in Vietnam, and upon his return to New York began acting off-Broadway, before going to Hollywood. After a guest role on Lear's "All in the Family," he was hired for one of the leads in "Sanford and Son." In 2022, Wilson told the Associated Press that he was competing with Richard Pryor for the role opposite Foxx. "I said, 'C'mon, you can't put a comedian with a comedian. You've got to have a straight man,'" he said he told producers.
The story of America can be told through the lyrics of folk music – songs of the Great Depression, the civil rights era, and the social revolutions of the 1960s. As folk singer Pete Seeger put it in 1967, "A song isn't a speech; a song is not an editorial. If a song tries to be an editorial or a speech, often it fails as a song. The best songs tell a story, paint a picture, and leave the conclusion up actually to the listener."