{"id":658118,"date":"2026-03-15T20:28:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-15T20:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/658118\/"},"modified":"2026-03-15T20:28:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T20:28:12","slug":"groundbreaking-blaxploitation-star-was-83","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/658118\/","title":{"rendered":"Groundbreaking Blaxploitation Star Was 83"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\t<a href=\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/tag\/judy-pace\/\" id=\"auto-tag_judy-pace\" data-tag=\"judy-pace\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Judy Pace<\/a>, a model and actress known for her roles in Blaxploitation films of the 1970s, has died. She was 83.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tThe Brian\u2019s Song actress\u2019 daughters Shawn and Julia Pace Mitchell announced that their mother \u201cdied peacefully in her sleep\u201d on Wednesday while visiting family in Marina Del Rey. <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tBorn June 15, 1942 in Los Angeles, Julia Pace trained as a model, becoming Ebony Fashion Fair\u2019s youngest in 1961.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tPace made her onscreen debut in William Castle\u2019s 1963 Cold War spy film 13 Frightened Girls, launching her career as the first Black woman contracted at Columbia Studios. Throughout the \u201960s, she went on to TV appearances in episodes of I Spy, Batman, Bewitched, Days of Our Lives, The Flying Nun, The Mod Squad, Tarzan and Peyton Place.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tShe won an NAACP Image Award for Best Actress during her time as Pat Walters on The Young Lawyers from 1969-\u201971.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tIn the \u201970s, Pace went on to star in several Blaxploitation films, including Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970) and The Slams (1973). She also portrayed wife of football legend Gale Sayers in Brian\u2019s Song (1971).<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tA philanthropist, Pace founded the Kwanza Foundation in \u201971 with Nichelle Nichols, supporting Black women working in film and providing scholarships to minority students pursuing careers in the arts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tPace is survived by her daughters, attorney Shawn Pace Mitchell and actress Julia Pace Mitchell, her grandson Stephen Lamar Hightower III, her son-in-law Otto Strong, and many cherished family members and close friends. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made in Judy Pace\u2019s honor to the NAACP.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Judy Pace, a model and actress known for her roles in Blaxploitation films of the 1970s, has died.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":658119,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[9],"tags":[171,278773,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-658118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-judy-pace","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116235082615595049","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=658118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/658119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}