Ossie Davis

Born: 1917 in Cogdell, Georgia

• • He was an African American author, poet, playwright, actor and director

    • He was born in Codgell as the oldest of five children

    • After he graduated from High School in Waycross, he went to Howard University but dropped out at the end of his junior year

    • He went to the U.S Army in 1942 and joined a theater group later on

    • He took courses on playwriting at Columbia University

    • Soon his plays started to appear on Broadway

• Purlie Victorious, his first play, was about a Southern black minister who tries to regain control over a black church seized by a white supremacist

• Soon the play went on to become a Broadway musical

  • He received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2004 and shared a Grammy Award in 2007 for Best Spoken Word Album

    • He was very close friends Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Jesse Jackson

Death: 2005 in Miami Beach, Florida