Best known for his portrayal of cantankerous Archie Bunker on the long-running CBS series All in the Family, Carroll O’Connor was one of television’s most recognized actors in the late 20th century. For his work on All in the Family and In the Heat of the Night, the actor received five Emmy Awards, eight Emmy nominations, a Golden Globe Award, and a Peabody Award.

O’Connor’s acting career began while he was a student in Ireland in the 1950s. Following experiences in American and European theater, he established himself as a versatile character actor in Hollywood during the 1960s. Between films he made guest appearances on television programs such as the U.S. Steel Hour, Kraft Television Theatre, the Armstrong Circle Theatre, and many of the filmed series hits of the 1960s. However, O’Connor became a television star with his portrayal of outspoken bigot Archie Bunker, the American archetype whose chair now sits in the Smithsonian Institution.

In 1968, ABC, which had the first rights to the series (which was based on the BBC sitcom Till Death Us Do Part), financed production of two pilot episodes of All in the Family (then under the title Those Were the Days), but the network worried about the program’s socially controversial content and rejected the show. Producer Norman Lear then sold the series to CBS, where All in the Family was broadcast for the first time on January 12, 1971, with O’Connor as Archie Bunker. By using humor to tackle racism and other sensitive subjects, All in the Family changed the style and tone of prime-time programming on television. It may also have opened the door for political and social satires such as Saturday Night Live and other controversial programs.

Through its 13 seasons, the show gained immense popularity (in its heyday, it was said to have reached an average of 50 million viewers weekly) and maintained a groundbreaking sense of social criticism. Archie Bunker’s regular stream of malapropisms and racial invective catalyzed strong reactions from critics. All in the Family was attacked by conservatives, who thought that the show made fun of their views, and by liberals, who charged that the show was too matter-of- fact about bigotry. The show’s successor, Archie Bunker’s Place, was broadcast on CBS from 1979 to 1983, and the earlier show also begat two successful spin-offs, Maude and The Jeffersons, the latter becoming one of television’s longest-running series about African Americans.

From 1988 to 1994, O’Connor starred in and served as executive producer and head writer for the hit prime-time drama In the Heat of the Night, based on the characters and scenario of the acclaimed 1967 film of the same title starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger. Set in fictional Sparta, Mississippi, but shot on location in Covington, Georgia, In the Heat of the Night may be seen as continuing O’Connor’s association with television programs designed to function as social commentary by addressing issues of racism and bigotry. O’Connor played Bill Gillespie (the Steiger role), a Southern police chief whose top detective (Virgil Tibbs, played by Howard Rollins in the Poitier role) is African American. In its 1993 season, the show also featured the marriage of Chief Gillespie to an African-American city administrator. The series received two National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Image Awards for contributing positive portrayals of African Americans on television. When the series version of In the Heat of the Night ended, O’Connor produced several made-for-television movies using the same locations and characters.

In 1995 O’Connor’s son and costar on In the Heat of the Night, Hugh O’Connor, died of a drug overdose. O’Connor chose to speak out publicly about his grief and his views on the legalization of drugs, giving a number of well-publicized interviews on these topics on television and devoting much of his time to the social problems surrounding drug addiction. Throughout the 1990s he also occasionally appeared in films or as a guest star on such series as Mad about You and Party of Five. On June 21, 2001, he died of a heart attack in Culver City, California.