But she was perhaps best known for her pioneering work on "Julia." Carroll played Julia Baker, a nurse whose husband had been killed in Vietnam, in the groundbreaking situation comedy that aired from 1968 to 1971.
Although she was not the first black woman to star in her own TV show (Ethel Waters played a maid in the 1950s series "Beulah"), she was the first to star as someone other than a servant.
NBC executives were wary about putting "Julia" on the network during the racial unrest of the 1960s, but it was an immediate hit.
It had its critics, though, including some who said Carroll's character, who is the mother of a young son, was not a realistic portrayal of a black American woman in the 1960s.