Esther Rolle, 78, Who Played Feisty Maid and Matriarch

Esther Rolle, a pioneering African-American actress who gained national recognition in the 1970's for her role as Florida Evans on two television shows, first ''Maude'' and then ''Good Times,'' died at a hospital here on Tuesday. She was 78 and lived in Los Angeles.

Larry Calhoun, her longtime publicist, said the cause of death had not been determined, but he added that Ms. Rolle had been suffering from diabetes and had been under dialysis. He said she had celebrated her 78th birthday a little more than a week ago, and that one of the last things she had done was to write a check to support a local black theater, something she had done most of her career.

Ms. Rolle met with many of her old friends and cast members of the two television shows just last week in a gathering here for a People magazine article.

Norman Lear, one of the executive producers of both of her shows, said the once-stocky actress appeared thin but vibrant, and that she had a role in a forthcoming movie, ''Down in the Delta,'' directed by the poet Maya Angelou and scheduled for release this month.

Ms. Rolle became famous for playing the role of a strong-willed maid on television, and in that role she also performed memorably in the play ''A Raisin in the Sun,'' in the television movie ''Summer of My German Soldier,'' for which she won an Emmy award in 1979, and in the movie ''Driving Miss Daisy.'' She also appeared in the film ''Rosewood.''

But she spoke firmly and often about about her desire to fight black stereotypes on television and even left the cast of ''Good Times'' for a while, saying at the time that she resented the image presented by the buffoonish character of her son in the show. In the show she played the matriarch of a struggling black family in Chicago.

Ms. Rolle was well known for her strong personality, both on and off screen, and her ear for the nuances of race relations. Mr. Lear, who was the executive producer of ''All in the Family,'' from which ''Maude'' and ''Good Times'' were later spun off, said one of his most vivid memories of Ms. Rolle was a musical number she performed with Beatrice Arthur, the actress who played Maude.

Mr. Lear said that every year there was a musical number on the show, and one season Ms. Rolle and Ms. Arthur performed ''Me and My Shadow.'' Ms. Arthur kept trying to stand in back and play the shadow in the scene, but Ms. Rolle kept slipping behind her, a striking metaphor for the subtleties of race relations that Mr. Lear described as ''an indelible memory of an indelible woman.''

Ms. Rolle was born in Pompano Beach, Fla., a retirement community that was once a bucolic farming town with the character of the deep South. She was the 10th of 18 children and her father was a farmer.

She had a theatrical bent and after high school followed her sister, Rosanna Carter, also an actress, to New York. She was one of the early members of the Negro Ensemble Company in New York and in the late 1950's performed with Shologa Oloba, an African-American dance troupe. In 1958 she and her sister appeared with the company in a revival of Asadata Dafora's ''Zunguru.''

In 1990 she became the first woman to receive the N.A.A.C.P. Chairman's Civil Rights Leadership Award for her work improving the image of blacks.

Ms. Rolle's marriage ended in divorce and she had no children, her publicist said. She is survived by two sisters and a brother.