Kiki Shepard

Shepard was born on July 15, 1951,^[2] in Tyler, Texas,^[1] the daughter of John Edward Shepard^[3] and Dorothy Hortense (Simpson) Shepard. Her father coached high-school baseball and basketball^[4] after having played semiprofessional baseball. Shepard sang, put on plays,^[5] and taught American and English literature at a high school. Both parents were champion competitive dancers.^[4] Shepard's older sister, Von Gretchen, was the 1974 Miss Black America; her younger sister, Cassandra Pia, works in the art industry.^[5]

She attended Emmett Scott High School.^[3] She ranked in the top division of her class there and received a $125 scholarship from the Zeta Phi Beta sorority.^[6] She competed in the Tyler (Texas) Junior Miss pageant in 1968,^[3] and in 1971 she competed in the Miss Denton (Texas) pageant.^[7]

Shepard attended North Texas State University^[7] and has a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Howard University. She was a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority^[8] and graduated in the top 10 percent of her class.^[5]

Shepard began dancing worldwide in 1971. While she was a student at Howard^[9] she became a charter member of the D. C. Repertory Dance Company. The troupe that began as an experimental workshop participated in the World Festival of Black Arts in Lagos, Nigeria^[10] in February 1977.^[9] Shepard said of the group, "We were dynamite! We communicated. We created an uproar in Washington. We fulfilled a need in the community."^[10]

In 1976, Shepard performed at the Delacourt Summer Shakespearean Festival in New York and in Owens Song at the Kennedy Center. She was one of the dancers on the 1977 Academy Awards broadcast.^[9]

She worked as an actress and voice actor. She performed in several Broadway theatre productions in the 1970s and 1980s.^[11][12] They included Bubbling Brown Sugar (1976), Comin' Uptown (1979), Reggae (1980), Your Arms Too Short to Box With God (1980, 1982), and Porgy and Bess (1983).^[13]

Shepard appeared in the film The Wiz (1978).^[10] Her work on television included being co-star of Showtime at the Apollo for 16 years, hosting Live in Hollywood,^[5] and portraying singer Trelawney in Thunder in Paradise.^[4]

She co-starred in Single Black Female, a play that premiered in Wilmington, Delaware, in 2011.^[14]

Shepard was honored at the International Women's Day Gospel Brunch on March 8, 2026, at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. She died from a heart attack in Los Angeles eight days later, on March 16, at the age of 74.^[15]