Ossie Davis--actor, director, producer, and playwright--is perhaps best known as a powerful and versatile actor in films, television, and on the stage. He is one of the few black writers to have had a play successfully produced on Broadway.

Davis, the son of Kince Charles and Laura Cooper Davis, was born in Cogdell, Georgia. Since his father worked as a railroad foreman, Davis's early years were spent moving around rural Georgia. Later the family settled in Waycross, Georgia. An excellent student, Davis fell in love with the theatre as a teenager. He began acting in plays and even wrote a play which was produced in his high school. After graduation from Center High School in Waycross in 1935, Davis hitchhiked to Washington, D.C., to live with a relative and study at Howard University. There he was encouraged in his writing by the black scholar Alain Locke. Davis's desire...