Ossie Davis
Activist, Director, Actor, Writer
Ossie Davis was an American actor, director, writer, and activist. He received numerous accolades including an Emmy, a Grammy and a Writers Guild of America Award as well as nominations for four additional Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and Tony Award. Davis was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1994 and received the National Medal of Arts in 1995, Kennedy Center Honors in 2004. Davis and his wife Ruby Dee were well known as civil rights activists during the Civil Rights Movement and were close friends of Malcolm X, Jesse Jackson, Martin Luther King Jr. and other icons of the era. They were involved in organizing the 1963 civil rights March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and served as its emcees. Davis, alongside Ahmed Osman, delivered the eulogy at the funeral of Malcolm X. He re-read part of this eulogy at the end of Spike Lee's film Malcolm X. He also delivered a stirring tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, at a memorial in New York's Central Park the day after King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.
Transcript
I've had cases that I've lost or haven't come out right, about which I've said, if I knew then what I know now, I would do it differently. Not so about Brown. I think we were lucky. We did it just right. It was one of those things that we did, I think, as perfectly as you could have. The victory represented by the high court's decision became a turning point in reshaping American society. In effect, Brown v. Board of Education signed Jim Crow's death warrant. Brown and the legal strategy it put forth to break the back of segregation set the stage for the modern Civil Rights Movement. We also thought that if we won, that would not be the end of it. Thurgood said back then we would still have to go county by county. Still we did not estimate correctly the depth and fierceness of the opposition.
Transcript
LDF and the lawyers that prepared the Brown cases, dared to imagine justice as colorblind. Their accomplishments have been essential to our collective dream of freedom. As I think about the recent voting in South Africa, where Black people for the first time in 300 years, go to the polls, I reflect on the 40th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, and what it has meant not only to African Americans, but to all Americans, because Brown was a decision which really rid this country of legal racial apartheid. When Brown was announced, I recall how elated we all were that the Supreme Court was at last speaking out about the meaning of the Constitution and giving hope to all of us that we too would be able to become a meaningful part of the society.
Transcript
Imagine the Jim Crow world of Charles Hamilton Houston. In the 1930s, more than 20 years before the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. Houston, a Harvard trained lawyer and Dean of Howard University's Law School set out to use the law as an instrument for social change. Houston was instrumental in developing the brilliant legal strategy that would eventually prove victorious for Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund on May 17, 1954, the day the United States Supreme Court declared segregated schools unconstitutional. I think too many students, when they read Brown today, say, oh gee, that's a slam dunk. How could you ever lose that case? Well I would just suggest if they could put themselves back into 1945 and realize that you were fighting a war for democracy, but yet, the entire army was segregated. When I recognized in 1949 when I was a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice, I couldn't eat in downtown Washington, D.C. The changes were tremendous, and it took a lot of skill to bring that about. It was not a slam dunk. And I really think that the American people really owe the Legal Defense Fund a great debt of gratitude.
