Ossie Davis

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Lore & Background

Ossie Davis was a tall, commanding presence with a deep, resonant voice and a dignified bearing that often lent itself to roles of moral authority, though he was equally adept at comedy and satire. His appearance was marked by a warm, expressive face and a full, graying beard in his later years. He was born in Cogdell, Georgia, and spent his early life in the rural South, where he experienced racism firsthand, including a Ku Klux Klan threat against his father. After attending Howard University and later Columbia University, he moved to New York City to pursue acting, beginning his career with the Rose McClendon Players in Harlem. His range as an actor was broad, encompassing Broadway musicals, dramatic film roles, and television miniseries. He frequently performed alongside his wife, Ruby Dee, with whom he shared a lifelong creative partnership. A defining characteristic of Davis’s career was his refusal to play demeaning stereotypes; he insisted on portraying characters with realism and dignity, even when cast as a Pullman porter or butler. He also wrote and starred in his own satirical farce, *Purlie Victorious*, which skewered the Confederate South. Beyond acting, he was a notable film director of the 1970s and a committed activist, using his platform to address racial injustice. His legacy includes a Grammy, an Emmy, and the National Medal of Arts.

Reader's Guide

Ossie Davis began his acting career in the 1940s with the Rose McClendon Players in Harlem, after dropping out of Howard University to pursue theater in New York. He made his Broadway debut in the post-World War II play *Jeb* and later earned a Tony Award nomination for his performance in the musical *Jamaica*. Davis wrote and starred in the satirical farce *Purlie Victorious*, which was adapted into both a film and a stage musical. As a film director, he helmed notable works including *Cotton Comes to Harlem*, *Black Girl*, and *Gordon's War*, establishing himself alongside Melvin Van Peebles and Gordon Parks as a prominent Black director of his era. His acting career spanned decades, with roles in films such as *The Hill*, *A Man Called Adam*, *The Scalphunters* (for which he received a Golden Globe nomination), *Do the Right Thing*, and *Grumpy Old Men*. On television, he earned Emmy nominations for his portrayal of Martin Luther King Sr. in the miniseries *King*, as well as for *Teacher, Teacher*, *Miss Evers' Boys*, and *The L Word*. He won a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album alongside his wife, Ruby Dee, with whom he frequently performed from their marriage in 1948 until his death. Davis was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame, received the National Medal of Arts, and was honored at the Kennedy Center. His work consistently challenged racial stereotypes, as he sought to portray dignified characters rather than caricatures, and he used his platform as an artist to advance civil rights.

Did You Know?

• Davis's birth name was Raiford Chatman Davis; he became known as 'Ossie' when a courthouse clerk misheard his mother's pronunciation of 'R. C. Davis'.
• He served in the United States Army Medical Corps during World War II.

Roots in Birmingham: A Childhood Forged by Struggle

Angela Yvonne Davis entered the world on January 26, 1944, in Birmingham, Alabama, a city whose racial violence would shape her entire life. Her family resided in a neighborhood locals called "Dynamite Hill," where in the 1950s, homes were bombed in a deliberate campaign to terrorize and displace middle-class Black residents who had moved in. Davis attended the segregated Carrie A. Tuggle elementary school and later Parker Annex, a middle-school branch of Parker High. Her mother, Sallye Bell Davis, served as a national officer and leading organizer of the Southern Negro Youth Congress, a Communist-influenced group building alliances among Southern African Americans. Growing up amid communist organizers and thinkers, young Davis absorbed a political worldview early. She credits her Girl Scout involvement—marching and picketing against segregation in Birmingham, attending the 1959 national roundup in Colorado—as a formative spark. By her junior year of high school, a Quaker program placed her at Elisabeth Irwin High School in Greenwich Village, where a communist youth organization called Advance recruited her into deeper political engagement.

The Scholar-Activist: Marcuse, France, and the Frankfurt School

A scholarship brought Davis to Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, where she was one of only three Black students in her cohort. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, she encountered Frankfurt School philosopher Herbert Marcuse at a rally and became his student. She majored in French, deepened her study of Jean-Paul Sartre, and spent a junior year in France through the Hamilton College program, first in Biarritz and later at the Sorbonne, living with a French family. After returning to the United States, she faced an FBI interview over her attendance at the communist-sponsored World Festival of Youth and Students in Helsinki. She then pursued graduate philosophy at the University of Frankfurt, later studied at UC San Diego, and traveled to East Germany to complete portions of her doctorate at Humboldt-University of Berlin.

The UCLA Firing and the Marin County Trial

The university's Board of Regents quickly moved to dismiss her, citing her membership in the Communist Party USA. After a court declared that termination illegal, the university cited inflammatory language as a new ground for her removal. The following year, events escalated dramatically: firearms registered to Davis were used in an armed takeover of a courtroom in Marin County, California, resulting in four deaths. She was charged with three capital felonies, including conspiracy to murder, and spent more than a year behind bars awaiting trial. During that period, many observers and supporters regarded her as a political prisoner rather than a common criminal. The episode cemented her status as a polarizing figure in American public life—celebrated by some as a symbol of resistance to state power, and condemned by others as a figure associated with political violence. The trial and its aftermath became a defining chapter in the civil rights and anti-war movements of the early 1970s.

Later Years: Building Institutions and Earning Recognition

That same year she joined the feminist studies department at UC Santa Cruz, eventually becoming its director before retiring in 2008. Despite these honors, she has remained a controversial figure, with critics accusing her of advocating political violence and of her longstanding Soviet alignment.