Print
Email
Share  |
It was all a mistake, really.
Friends overheard his mother’s thick Georgian drawl swirl around the initials of his given name (Rainford Chapman) and “Ossie” Davis was born. Actually, he had arrived a few years earlier, in December of 1917. The eldest of Laura and Kince Davis’s five children, this boy with the accidental nickname would go on to become a leading light in the African American political and culture experience for the next 60 years.
It’s no surprise then that when he passed away on 4 February 2005, Davis was yet a vital, energetic, and—most importantly—working actor. On location in Miami Beach preparing for yet another role in yet another film, he was as committed to his purpose at age 87 as he was at 17. As he said during a key moment in his portrayal of Melvin Van Peebles’ father in 2004’s Baadasssss!, “A man’s got to know how to make a living.”
And what a living he made. Washington D.C. and Howard University provided refuge from his rural upbringing in and around Waycross, GA. Thanks in no small part to the mentorship of one of his teachers, the first black Rhodes Scholar Alain LeRoy Locke, a whole new world was opened to him. After graduating fifth in his class, the upstart actor moved to New York City, where he worked with the Rose McClendon Players of Harlem. He first took the stage in 1939, and met with some minor success before his career was put on hold by the arrival of World War II.
He served his nation well. As part of an African American medical unit in Libya, he aided more than 700,000 injured troops, stabilizing them for the trip home. During his four years of service, Davis developed strong views about the value of all human life. When he returned to find a growing anti-racist sensibility among the theatrical community, Davis determined to do all he could toward the achievement of universal U.S. civil rights.
His first big theatrical break came with a starring role alongside a stage veteran: 1946’s Jeb marked the first pairing of Davis with Ruby Dee. He thought she was wonderful. She considered him a “country bumpkin.” They married in 1948, and their personal and professional partnership would last 56 years. Together, they worked on screen and off, in creative collaborations and political activism.
Both Davis and Dee point to the ‘40s and ‘50s as a time of equal opportunity to accomplish great things, professionally and on the picket line. During those decades, the couple worked with radicals and revolutionaries of the growing movement, including W. E. B DuBois, Langston Hughes, and Jackie Robinson. Their close friendship with Paul Robeson gave them a seat front and center at the cruel circus that was the McCarthy era. (Robeson was a well known supporter of communism). They entered the Hollywood fray in 1950, when they appeared with a then unknown Sidney Poitier in No Way Out (earlier that same year, Dee played Rae, wife of the real life Jackie Robinson when his story was finally brought to the big screen).
For Davis, the ‘60s was a decade of fundamental change. Professionally, his 1961 Broadway hit Purlie Victorious was heralded as a brave, biting satire of segregation (it would later go on to become the 1963 film Gone Are the Days! and the Tony-winning 1970 musical Purlie). Politically, both he and Dee became increasingly aggressive advocates for social change. They raised money for the Freedom Riders, helped to organize the 1963 March on Washington D.C., and supported the civil rights work of both Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X (Davis was a keynote speaker at both their funerals). For Davis and Dee, activism was as important as acting.
In 1970, Davis co-wrote and directed an adaptation of Chester Himes’ Cotton Comes to Harlem, a year before Melvin Van Peebles made Sweet Sweetback’s Baaadasssss Song. Though he would helm only four more films—including the equally influential Black Girl (1972) and the first U.S. production shot completely in Africa with an all African crew, 1976’s Countdown at Kusini—his work made a deep and lasting impression on later young, independent moviemakers.
Dee and Davis remained the first couple of African American film, embodiments of pride and purpose. Performing separately and with his wife, Davis found consistent work in both dramatic and comedic roles (he was a regular on the Burt Reynold’s sitcom Evening Shade). His recent collaborations with Spike Lee resonate as the liveliest and loudest, especially for younger viewers. He was Da Mayor in Do the Right Thing (in which he delivered the famous title line, “Always do the right thing”), the Good Reverend Doctor Purify in Jungle Fever (1991), Jeremiah in Get on the Bus (1996), and Judge Buchanan in She Hate Me (2004). He played Eddie Murphy’s father in Dr. Dolittle (1988) and a nursing home patient who thinks he’s “Jack Kennedy” in 2002’s Bubba Ho-Tep.
Throughout his long career and wide range of performances, Ossie Davis remained constant, a stoic emblem of hope and empowerment. While other actors may have been more passionate or prosaic about their politics, none was as consistent—or correct—as Davis.
