Ossie Davis

Actor, writer, and activist

• Born: December 18, 1917
• Birthplace: Cogdell, Georgia
• Died: February 4, 2005
• Place of death: Miami Beach, Florida

Over an exceptionally long career as actor, playwright, and director in the theater, cinema, and television, Davis stood as an inspiring example of talent, dignity, and perseverance in the arts. On stage and off, Davis led a life of unwavering commitment to social justice for all Americans.

Early Life

Raiford Chatman Davis was the first of five children born to Kince Charles Davis and Laura Cooper Davis in a Georgia town of four hundred residents. Davis’s father was a self-taught railroad engineer and herb doctor, a preacher in the local church, and a master storyteller. Although illiterate and living in an area rife with Ku Klux Klan members, he was a man of pride and achievement. The name Ossie was the result of a white county clerk misunderstanding the pronunciation of “R. C.” by Davis’s mother.

Throughout Davis’s youth, he appeared in plays, operettas, and pageants in the segregated public schools he attended. After graduating from high school in the midst of the Depression, Davis went to the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, but a lack of money forced him to leave the famed institution. Traveling with a precious ten-dollar bill pinned to his underwear, Davis moved in with relatives in Washington, D.C., in order to continue his studies at Howard University. He left Howard before completing his degree to try his luck in New York City’s vibrant theater world. His long acting career began in 1939 with the Rose McClendon Players in Harlem.

When the United States entered World War II, Davis enlisted in the Army and was stationed in Liberia, West Africa. Not only did this experience in Africa significantly shape Davis’s identity, but it also provided an opportunity for the young soldier to write and produce plays for fellow soldiers. After the war, Davis returned to New York City, where opportunities were still limited for African Americans, regardless of their talent. Nevertheless, Davis found work in a company touring with the melodrama Anna Lucasta, a job that proved life-changing, for among the cast was Ruby Dee, a talented young woman who would become Davis’s wife and life partner. (In 1998, the couple celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary.)

Life’s Work

An imposing presence, standing six feet, three inches tall with a deep, melodious voice, Davis found irregular work as an actor, often in small parts, on stage, in film, and on television in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Davis replaced Sidney Poitier in the lead male role in the Broadway production of A Raisin in the Sun (1959-1960), the family drama that became an American classic. He appeared in important supporting roles in a cluster of Hollywood productions, including a memorable role as a defiant West Indian in The Hill (1965), a World War II drama set in a British military stockade. He played a recurring character in the television horror series Night Gallery (1969), a show that helped launch the career of director Steven Spielberg.

Davis was involved in writing projects, mostly for the stage, throughout his long career. One of his first produced plays was the one-act Alice in Wonder (1953), starring Dee. He wrote and starred in the memorable Broadway play Purlie Victorious (1961). Davis also wrote a historical play, Paul Robeson: All American, that is often performed for youth audiences. In addition to publishing a dual autobiography with his wife (With Ossie and Ruby: In This Life Together, 1998), Davis wrote biographies (Escape to Freedom: The Story of the Young Frederick Douglass, 1977, and Langston, 1982) and a children’s book (Just Like Martin, 1992). His books all convey a strong sense of racial pride and hopefulness. In 1984, Davis won a Writers Guild Award for his historical drama For Us the Living: The Medgar Evers Story.

For more than six decades Davis championed civil rights and equality in the entertainment industry. In the mid-1970’s, he was instrumental in the creation of New York’s Third World Cinema Corporation, an organization launched to support job opportunities in film and television for people of color. In this period of new opportunities for African Americans, Davis began directing films, notably Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970). With a screenplay by Davis based on a novel by Chester Himes, the United Artists film humorously tracked the adventures of two black cops in Harlem. In 1973, Davis directed an independent action film also set in Harlem, Gordon’s War, about a group of African American Vietnam veterans who go to war against drug dealers.

These films were popular with urban audiences, and their financial success helped trigger a wave of violent and sensational “blaxploitation” films in the mid-1970’s. Davis decried the genre, particularly for its celebration of the drug culture. Davis directed two independent films set in Nigeria that dramatized the transition of the African nation from colonialism to independence: Kongi’s Harvest(1970), a collaboration with future Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka, and Countdown at Kusini (1976). Another film directed by Davis, the modestly budgeted family drama Black Girl (1972), was notable for its focus on three generations of struggling black women. From 1980 to 1982, Davis and Dee were cohosts of the PBS television series Ossie and Ruby!, a thirty-minute talk show. The open format of the series provided the couple with an opportunity to showcase many under-recognized African American artists.

In the late 1980’s, Davis was introduced to a wide, young film audience through two Spike Lee films, School Daze (1988) and Do the Right Thing (1989). These films began an important collaboration between the young director and the mature actor that would extend through seven films, the last of which— She Hate Me (2004)—was released shortly before Davis’s death. Narrating and playing a central role as one of the residents of a small southern town in the television sitcom Evening Shade (1990-1994) brought the actor greater recognition and financial reward. He also was an audience favorite opposite Walter Matthau in I’m Not Rappaport on Broadway (1985-1988) and on film (1996). Davis not only moved skillfully among cinema, theater, and television work, he also appeared in both mainstream and alternative venues. He was involved in scores of independent film, television, and stage projects during the 1990’s and into the next decade.

Throughout their adult lives, both Davis and Dee devoted much of their time and energy to working for social justice, commitments that made it doubly difficult for them to find work in mainstream media during the McCarthy era. Davis, as narrator or commentator, contributed to dozens of documentaries about civil rights, African American history, and various progressive causes. The couple were at the forefront of the organization of the 1963 civil rights March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and emceed that event and many others. Davis was a close personal friend of both Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X. King routinely stayed at the Davis home when making stops in New York City, and Davis delivered a tribute to the civil rights leader at a memorial in Central Park after King’s 1968 assassination. A few years earlier, Davis was one of two eulogists at the funeral of Malcolm X. In the Spike Lee biopic Malcolm X (1992), Davis ends the film by repeating part of his stirring eulogy.

When Davis died of natural causes in 2005, he was in pre-production for a new film. Only months earlier, he had completed filming an episode of the cable television series The L Word, in which his character died. Davis was eighty-seven and had more than one hundred film and television roles to his credit.

Significance

Beginning his career in post-World War II America, at a time when parts for African American actors were few and far between, Davis nevertheless built a career that was challenging, dignified, diverse, and influential. He wrote plays and books; he acted on stage, in film, and on television; he directed films and narrated documentaries; he cohosted a talk show and voiced animation characters; and he was a spokesman for civil rights and a champion for social justice. In 2001, the Screen Actors Guild recognized Davis and Dee with Lifetime Achievement Awards. In recognition of six decades of achievements in the arts and as citizen leaders, Kennedy Center Honors were bestowed on the accomplished couple in 2004.

Bibliography

Brasmer, William, and Dominick Consolo, eds. Black Drama: An Anthology. Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill, 1970. Includes Purlie Victorious and a short biography of Davis.

Davis, Ossie, and Ruby Dee. With Ossie and Ruby: In This Life Together. New York: William Morrow, 1998. A lengthy and conversational dual biography that begins with alternating chapters until the couple meets, then a joint account of a long-lasting marriage and two remarkable, intertwined careers. Extensive appendixes of credits and awards; fifty-six black-and-white photographs.

Donaldson, Melvin. Black Directors in Hollywood. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003. Discusses Davis and Sidney Poitier as “visionary actors” who also directed feature films.

Funke, Lewis. Curtain Rises: The Story of Ossie Davis. Illustrated by H. B. Vestal. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1971. Written for young readers, this inspirational biography includes an important section on Davis’s father, Kince Davis.

Lee, Spike, and Kaleem Aftab. That’s My Story and I’m Sticking to It. New York: W. W. Norton, 2005. Lee’s career autobiography includes discussion of the seven films in which he directed Davis; black-and-white photographs.