Ossie Davis

Ossie Davis was an American film, television and Broadway actor, director, poet, playwright, author, and civil rights activist.

Davis was born Raiford Chatman Davis in Cogdell, Clinch County, Georgia, a son of Kince Charles Davis, a railway construction engineer, and his wife Laura . The name Ossie came from a county clerk who misheard his mothers pronunciation of his initials R.C. when he was born. So he inadvertently became Ossie when his mother told the courthouse clerk in Clinch County, Ga., who was filing his birth certificate that his name was R.C. Davis. Davis experienced racism from an early age when the KKK threatened to shoot his father, whose job they felt was too advanced for a black man to have. Following the wishes of his parents, he attended Howard University but dropped out in 1939 to fulfill his acting career in New York he later attended Columbia University School of General Studies. His acting career, which spanned eight decades, began in 1939 with the Rose McClendon Players in Harlem. During World War II, Davis served in the United States Army in the Medical Corps. He made his film debut in

Source: Wikipedia