Here are the details of the Cicely Tyson beat down incident Miles Davis described in his book, “Miles:

THE FIGHT
“Things started to get really bad with Cicely over an incident with a woman, a white woman, who was just a friend of mine. I had met her one day in the elevator of the building where Cicely and I lived on Fifth Avenue and 79th Street. It was in 1984, and I was on crutches from my hip operation. We just started talking and became friends. That was it. I would say hello and stop to talk with her whenever I saw her. Gradually Cicely got jealous of her. Finally one day she jumped the woman in broad daylight and beat her up. The woman had her seven-year-old son with her. Cicely thought I was going with the woman. But I wasn’t.”

MILES SAYS CICELY PULLED OUT HIS WEAVE

“Sometime later in 1986, right before a concert I was playing with B.B. King at the Beacon Theater in New York, Cicely and I had an argument and she jumped on my back and pulled my hair weave right out of my head. That was the last straw. We couldn’t stay together and even go out after that, but now when I look back on everything, I knew that was the beginning of the end. That shit got so crazy that someone, and I believe it was Cicely, called the National Enquirer and told them that I was having an affair with this woman that Cicely had beat up. The Enquirer called up my friend, but she wouldn’t talk to them. Cicely herself even tried to call up my friend, acting like a reporter from the Enquirer. Man, that sh*t got sick.”

 

 

 

It seems they made up soon after that, here’s what Miles did next:
“After a while, Cicely had to go to Africa, first to make a film, and then because she was Chairperson of the United Nations Children’s Fund 1985-86 and she had to tour the drought stricken areas over there. I bought her a Rolls Royce automobile as a present when she returned. When they delivered it, she couldn’t believe it. She thought someone was playing a joke on her.”

Now before we make assumptions about Ms. Tyson’s temper, there is more to this story. They had a history of problems prior to this event. Miles explained that here…

“On Thanksgiving Day in 1981 Cicely and I got married at Bill Cosby’s house in Massachusetts by Andrew Young…It was a nice ceremony but if you look at the pictures of that wedding, you can see I was…