He received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 1991 and a star on Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1992.

Peters notable film roles include Carmen Jones (1954), The Pawnbroker (1964), Soylent Green (1973) and Ghosts of Mississippi (1996).

Upon graduation, Peters initially fielded more odd jobs than acting jobs, often working as a hospital orderly at night while he worked his way through physical education studies at the City College of New York (CCNY), but he still stayed connected to the burgeoning theatre and creative community in New York, occasionally doing background parts in musical plays like "Black Aida".

After auditioning and landing a spot touring with the Leonard DePaur Infantry Chorus (of which he was a civilian member from 1945 to 1947), however, he officially quit CCNY.

DePaur subsequently gave him the lead in the Chorus' popular rendition of "John Henry" (which became a repertoire mainstay of Peters in later years, singing the work on one of his two solo albums which was produced by United Artists Records in the 1960s).

During this time, Peters and Belafonte became close friends, sharing similar political views and approaches to their careers.

In 1963, he played Matthew Robinson in Heavens Above!, a British satirical-comedy film starring Peter Sellers, directed by John and Roy Boulting.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, Peters plays Tom Robinson, a black man falsely accused of raping a white girl, a crime Atticus Finch shows he could not have committed because his left hand and arm were damaged.

[4] He also played the role of a Colonial prosecutor trying to make a murder case against Starbuck in an episode of the original Battlestar Galactica.

The two became friends and subsequently worked together on several films, including Major Dundee, Soylent Green, and Two-Minute Warning.

[1] Peters is buried in the Revelation section at Hollywood Hills Forest Lawn Cemetery, in Los Angeles, California.