After attending City College of New York, she began her career on the New York stage with the Café LaMama Theater troupe and Theater West in Los Angeles,[1] touring in such productions as The Skin of Our Teeth, Lysistrata and The Blacks.

She had a role in the 1973 animated drama film Heavy Traffic as a black bartender named Carole who enters into a relationship with the struggling white cartoonist son of a Mafioso.

She began her television career with minor roles, but found steadier work as her character career continued in the same flashy vein, playing angry women down-on-their-luck or whose lives were caught in drugs and addiction, most notably in a recurring role on Hill Street Blues from 1984 to 1986.

[1] She made a memorable appearance on Good Times as "Sweet Daddy" Williams' girlfriend Savannah Morgan.

Atkinson died of cancer in Los Angeles, California, two days after her 66th birthday.