together. Celebrating their 50th anniversary and
decades in entertainment and politics, they coau-
thored a joint memoir titled With Ossie and Ruby:
In This Life Together (1998).
Working as an actor in the late 1940s and 1950s
in such plays as Anna Lucasta (1946), A Long Way
from Home (1948), Stevedore (1949), Green Pas-
tures (1951), No Time for Sergeants (1956) and
A RAISIN IN THE SUN (1959), Davis also wrote the
one-act plays Clay’s Rebellion (1951), about the
1906 Brownsville, Texas, racial violence; Alice in
Wonder (1952), focusing on a black entertainer
who is pressured to testify against a black political
leader at anticommunist hearings; and What Can
You Say, Mississippi? (1955), responding to the Em-
mett Till murder case. But it was Davis’s full-length
play PURLIE VICTORIOUS (1961) that finally brought
him a wide acclaim as a playwright. The result of
five years of work, the play is a comedy that exam-
ines the ludicrous nature of racial stereotypes as it
follows a black preacher who attempts to form a
racially integrated church in the segregated South.
The successful play went on to be adapted into the
film Gone Are the Days (1963) and later the musi-
cal play Purlie (1970), which was nominated for a
Tony Award as Best Musical.
In the 1950s, Davis also extended his efforts into
film and television. His film appearances included
No Way Out (1950), Fourteen Hours (1951), and
The Joe Louis Story (1953), as well as a television
version of The Emperor Jones (1955).
It was also in the early 1950s that Davis’s radi-
calism went beyond writing, as he and Ruby Dee
became involved personally and professionally
with people, events, and productions deemed
“leftist.” Davis and Dee survived the guilty-by-as-
sociation labels, as they supported accused friends
who were kept from working by the anticommu-
nist blacklisting. But Davis’s commitment to fair-
ness was just as intense when responding to racial
issues. Working with organizations such as the
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF
COLORED PEOPLE, CORE, and the Urban League, he
was viewed as a stalwart leader and voice for the
cause of human rights. Davis observed, “Ruby and
I... We took a lot of chances, but we never bluffed,
or postured, or pulled rank unless we had to. To-
gether we met the cataclysmic changes rushing at
us from all sides—efforts to unionize the hospi-
tals; the antiwar demonstrations; the dogs and fire
hoses in Birmingham; the funerals and the turmoil
when Kennedy, Malcolm, and later, King, were
assassinated” (Davis and Dee, 347). In 1963, he
served as the master of ceremonies for the March
on Washington. Later in the decade he delivered
the eulogies for both MALCOLM X and MARTIN
LUTHER KING, JR. In the 1970s he cochaired, along
with Dick Gregory, the Committee to Defend the
Panthers, and Davis chaired the Committee to De-
fend Angela Davis.
The 1970s, however, developed as a creative era
for Davis, as he added film directing to his cred-
its by completing Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970),
Kongi’s Harvest (1971), Black Girl (1972), and
Countdown at Kusini (1976). Other than the com-
mercial success of Cotton Comes to Harlem, which
was based on a novel by CHESTER HIMES, Davis’s ef-
forts as a film director never reached the same level
of popularity as his acting over the decades. Davis
has appeared in more than 25 films, including
The Cardinal (1963), A Man Called Adam (1966),
The Scalphunters (1968), Let’s Do It Again (1975),
School Daze (1988), Do the Right Thing (1989),
Malcolm X (1992), The Client (1994), and Get on
the Bus (1996).
On the small screen, audiences saw Davis in
recurring roles in television series, including The
Defenders (1963–65), B. L. Stryker (1989–90), Eve-
ning Shade (1990–94), and The Client (1995–96),
as well as in the miniseries King (1978), Roots: The
Next Generation (1978), and Alex Haley’s Queen
(1993). His roles in television movies were just as
numerous over the years; he appeared in Teacher,
Teacher (1969), Freedom Road (1979), Miss Evers’
Boys (1997), and Twelve Angry Men (1997).
Concurrently, as he performed on screen,
he continued writing in various mediums. He
penned several plays, namely Curtain Call, Mr.
Aldridge, Sir (1963), Escape to Freedom: The Story
of Frederick Douglass, A Play for Young People
(1976), and Langston: A Play (1982). His young
adult novel, Just Like Martin, set during the his-
torical period of the 1963 March on Washington,
appeared in 1992.Davis, Ossie 133