Sands as Louise with Oscar on Sesame Street.
Sands as Cora with Roscoe Orman in Willie Dynamite.
Diana Sands (1934-1973) was an actress who guest starred during the second season of Sesame Street, playing one-time street friend Louise in Episode 0222.
Sands originated the role of daughter Beneatha in A Raisin in the Sun on Broadway (with Ruby Dee), garnering a Tony Award nomination and reprising it for the film version. Other Broadway plays included The Owl and the Pussycat and the title role in the 1968 revival of Saint Joan (with Northern Calloway). After Raisin in the Sun, she had prominent guest roles on TV shows including Eastside/Westside (netting an Emmy-nomination for the episode "Who Do You Kill?" opposite James Earl Jones), The Outer Limits, I Spy, Dr. Kildare, The Fugitive, and Julia (four times as Julia's actress cousin).
Sands was a frequent guest on talk and game shows, while other films included An Affair of the Skin (with Will Lee), Ensign Pulver (with Walter Matthau), The Landlord (with Pearl Bailey and Robert Klein), and Georgia Georgia (playing the lead in a Maya Angelou screenplay). She participated in the Marlo Thomas album Free to Be... You and Me and her final films, released posthumously in 1974, were the blaxploitation movies Willie Dynamite (opposite Roscoe Orman, as a social worker trying to protect hookers) and Honeybaby, Honeybaby (as a UN translator turned action heroine).