Davis, Ossie

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Davis, Ossie

December 18, 1917
February 4, 2005

Actor and playwright Ossie Davis was born in Cogdell, Georgia, to Kince Charles Davis, a railroad construction worker, and Laura Cooper Davis. After finishing high school in Waycross, Georgia, he hitchhiked north and attended Howard University. In 1937 Davis left Howard and went to New York City, where he worked at odd jobs before joining Harlem's Rose McClendon Players in 1939.

Davis was drafted into the army in 1942, and after his discharge in 1945 he again pursued his acting career. In 1946 he successfully auditioned for Robert Ardrey's Jeb, in which he starred opposite actress Ruby Dee. Davis and Dee were married in 1948.

In 1953 Davis wrote Alice in Wonder, a one-act play produced in Harlem that dealt with the politics of the Mc-Carthy era. Blacklisted for left-wing associations, Davis and Dee supported themselves by staging readings at colleges. In 1955 Davis starred in a television production of Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones, and two years later appeared on Broadway opposite Lena Horne in Jamaica!

In the 1960s Davis achieved broad success in the performing arts. In 1960 he replaced Sidney Poitier and appeared with Ruby Dee in Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun. The following year, his play Purlie Victorious, a satire on southern racism, opened on Broadway to an enthusiastic response. Davis also wrote and starred in the film version of Purlie Victorious, entitled Gone Are the Days (1963). He appeared in several other films during this period, including The Cardinal (1963), The Hill (1964), The Scalphunters (1968), and Slaves (1969). He also appeared on several television shows, wrote an episode for the popular series East Side/West Side, and narrated National Education Television's History of the Negro People (1965). In 1969 Davis was nominated for an Emmy award for his performance in the Hallmark Hall of Fame special Teacher, Teacher. That same year Davis directed, cowrote, and acted in the film Cotton Comes to Harlem, based on a novel by Chester Himes.

During these years, Davis continued his political activities. In 1962 he testified before Congress on racial discrimination in the theater and joined the advisory board of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). The following year he wrote a skit for the 1963 March on Washington, and in 1965 he delivered a eulogy at the funeral of his friend, Malcolm X. In 1972 he served as chairman of the Angela Davis Defense Fund. While Davis has strong affinities with black nationalism, he has nonetheless rejected black racism and separatism.

Through the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s, Davis continued his performing career, notably in a radio series, the Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee Hour (1974–1976); in the public television series With Ossie and Ruby (1981); in the role of Martin Luther King, Sr., in Abby Mann's television miniseries King (1977); and in the Spike Lee films Do the Right Thing (1989), Jungle Fever (1991), and I'm Not Rappaport (1996). Throughout the early 1990s, he was a semiregular on the television series Evening Shade. Davis also has written several children's books, which include plays based on the lives of Frederick Douglass and Langston Hughes, and a novel, Just Like Martin (1992), about a southern boy, inspired by the life of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1998 Davis celebrated his fiftieth wedding anniversary with Ruby Dee by publishing a joint memoir, With Ossie and Ruby Dee: In This Life Together. His play A Last Dance for Sybil was produced off-Broadway in 2002. Davis continues to take on roles in films and television shows, including episodes of such series as JAG, Third Watch, and Touched by an Angel.