A family spokesperson said Spencer died Monday after battling cancer for several years. As Dee, she was a deadpan, wisecracking sister on What's Happening!! Spencer later became a veterinarian.

Danielle Spencer, who played the precocious youngster Dee Thomas on the 1970s ABC sitcom What’s Happening!!, has died. She was 60. Spencer died Monday in a hospital in Richmond, Virginia, her What’s Happening!! co-star Haywood Nelson told The Hollywood Reporter .

She played a witty teenager on one of the first American television shows that centered on young Black people.