Knowing Ossie Davis

FOREWORD to Life Lit by Some Vision

When Ossie and I first got married, I thought I’d impress him with my respect for order in the universe as well as for the intricate lines and squares and diamond shapes in the argyle socks I was making to caress his feet. Knit. Purl. Knit. Purl. Alas, my handiwork earned me a lukewarm “Oh, Baby, thanks.” Not to be deterred from my bridey zeal, I was deter­mined to find a new incentive for my passionate needlework. Knit. Purl. Knit. Purl. Socks just wasn’t it.

Mind looking now for some other place to land, to medi­tate on new ways to make him realize just what a lucky man he was to have me, after all. It was in such moments that I de­cided to let the world know that my husband, Ossie Davis, was a genius (he had married me, hadn’t he?).

I had long known how much Ossie delighted in language — the rhythms in the Bible, for example. He’d often roll out verses in iambic pentameter or some other pattern. He had written poems before we met. I thought they were fascinating, and I soon began sending his poetry to various publications, without success. (Truth be told, only two people ever an­swered me.)

He treated words as if they tasted good, often laughing out loud at some juxtaposition that hopped into his head or that he’d read or written. I began to witness the spell he cast on au­diences, even then, as his brilliance spilled from his brain onto his tongue or from his number 2 pencil, and out into the world. No subject seemed out of his range — it didn’t take much to launch him into an encyclopedic treatise on every­thing from international “isms” to how to get a mule moving or thump a watermelon. He had the wonderful ability to take big ideas and break them down into bite-sized notions, mak­ing the complex available, even funny.

Over the years, I gathered up tapes, eulogies, letters, articles — some born of conversations or arguments or time spent around the dinner table with the children. His address at the first Congressional Black Caucus dinner was just such a col­laboration. He wondered aloud, one night, what he might say to a group of black politicians that they hadn’t already heard. All the children, mouths full, started ad-libbing. I was too busy between the table and the stove to pay much attention. I heard one of them say, “It’s not the man; it’s the plan, Daddy,” countered by “It’s not the rap; it’s the map.” We all howled! From that family brainstorm, Ossie went on to deliver one of the best remembered of his keynote speeches.

He often quoted freely from a number of philosophers of whom he was an avid reader: Schopenhauer, Du Bois, Niet­zsche, etc. Later, he gave up quoting from his favorites, saying that he realized that he was just searching in their brains, seek­ing a way to untangle himself from the chains of racism and other madnesses.

Ossie was a true student of life who never tired of learn­ing. He drew from people, stories, laughing, loving — a fer­tile environment where he cultivated the ideas that governed his passionate, principled, generous life. This book is the harvest of some of the words he left us.

— Ruby Dee

SPEECHES

I have never looked upon myself as a magician. I was not sent by the Almighty to solve all the problems of the world at one fell swoop. I’m not morally arrogant; I ac­cept the fact that maybe this generation was not the one designed by fate to bring peace to the world. But I also believe that it is necessary to stay on the march, to be on the journey, to work for peace wherever we are at all times because the liberty we cherish, which we would share with the world, demands eternal vigilance. And democracy is no easy path, but those of us who believe in it must be prepared to sacrifice in its cause more willingly than those who are prepared to die in wars of aggression. We, too, must be dedicated to the cause of freedom.

— DURING THE EVENING OF RESISTANCE, RIVERSIDE CHURCH, NEW YORK CITY, MARCH 27, 2003

ADDRESS AT THE PALM GARDEN

October 10, 1952 (Originally distributed by the National Council of the Arts, Sciences and Professions)

R.D.: No doubt about it! It was not the best of times — especially for white America. Black America already knew about witch hunts, about what happens to troublemakers wanting to vote — lynching, castration, job discrimination. Say what? Communism? Socialism? Liberalism? Are you now or have you ever been…? Weren’t you one of those at a meeting on . . . ? Isn’t this your picture published in…? People fired. Dying. Broke. Running. Lying. Being brave. Selling out. Betrayal. It was definitely one of the worst of times.

It is my honor and my privilege to be with you tonight in this meeting of protest. The inquisition is upon us, and our very right to meet together and talk like this is under fire. All over the country, men and women are becoming increasingly aware of what is happening to their freedom. Teachers of many years of service are fired without hearings. Actors are barred from employment because they refuse to be bullied about their politics. Lawyers, doctors, miners, longshoremen, newsmen, and publishers are all being violently pushed around in the grossest violation of civil rights in the history of the Republic. But, thank God, they are fighting back. The

McCarran Committee has not found itself welcomed every­where. Men are beginning to remember what liberty means to them and have not hesitated, in some places, to drive the witch hunter from their midst. We here tonight can take courage from all the various groups and individuals who have had the guts to put the boot to this evil thing. They have shown that it can be fought. And it must be fought — with every weapon an aroused democracy can lay its hands upon.

I wrote a play called Alice in Wonder, which we presented briefly — all too briefly — up in Harlem a week or so ago. And on the basis of that I was invited to come here tonight and speak to you. It wasn’t much, this play, but it was mine. And it gave my wife, Miss Ruby Dee — whom I consider the poten­tial equal of any actress in the land — a chance to practice her craft. Few Negroes get that opportunity these days. “Black Channels,” you know — For I must tell you that economic in­terdiction (which means that nobody will hire you, no matter how good you are) is not a new thing to us. Negro teachers have long been the victims of the most arrant job discrimina­tion in this city. And Negro actors who work once every five years are doing pretty well. I myself have been lucky — in six years I have managed to work in eight shows on Broadway; and five times out of that eight I carried a tray. I had to. There was nothing else for black performers to carry. Oh yes, I have heard of Red Channels,* and I am horrified every time I see it in action. That a man should be banished from his profession without recourse, merely as a consequence of the color of his politics, is as grossly unjust as that a man should suffer the same punishment merely as a consequence of the color of his face. Red Channels or Black Channels — there’s precious little difference to a man with a family to feed. Both these evil things attack me through my need for security, and I cannot hate the one without detesting the other. The good citizen is at war with both!

But back to Alice in Wonder. In it, I tried to show two things: first, how absolutely heartbreaking it is to ask a man to give up his bread for his principles; and second, how ab­solutely necessary it is that he should do just that.

For the true function of drama is to remind us that man is dedicated to the pursuit of the good, in spite of himself, and that to pursue the good successfully, he must know the alternatives and choose wisely from among them.

The man I wrote about found himself in a predicament increasingly familiar to us all: he had either to hunt with the hounds of McCarthy and McCarran, or to run with the hares and the victims: the harassed, the persecuted, the falsely stig­matized. To sacrifice his honor in order to keep his job — or have no job to keep. This is indeed a bitter choice. The man I wrote about made one decision. His wife, who loved him dearly, made another. They went their separate ways, and the play was ended.

But for us the curtain is still up. The crisis is at hand, the villain waits in the wings, his cue has been sounded, he makes his entrance — Senator McCarran has come. And to what end, we know only too well. The day is almost gone when any actor could get a job, or any teacher hold one, provided he had the talent and the training; when any playwright, no matter how controversial or nonconforming, could find some producer to put on his works; when any play, however dissenting, had a fair chance to find its audience — uncensored and unencum­bered. Now the investigator is kind; controversy gives way to conformity; the rest is silence. The inquisitorial nose has found the theater a fleshpot of liberal ideas and practices, a cesspool of light and of joy, the one place on our national scene where democracy was close to coming alive. Such an aura of high spirits, such an atmosphere of universal goodwill was hardly conducive to the hunting of witches. It had to be destroyed. From now on, Senator McCarran proposes to write the dialogue.

It has been said of the theater that it is vain, that it is fool­ish, that it is trivial. That it has nothing of consequence to say, that it is no longer the conscience of the nation, that it does not concern itself with the bitter realities of life, that it has cut itself off from its roots in the masses, that it has become the self-indulgent vocal cords of privilege. All too often these charges have been justified.

But, is this all? Is this the picture completely? Is this the whole story? No! There have been giants among us, and few as they have been, they have left a heritage worth defending. The theater is not dead. It is very much alive. And we must keep it alive because we need it now more than ever. There is hope to be fetched, and faith to be carried. There is the problem to be defined, the strength to be mobilized, a conscience to be aroused, an enemy to be defeated. The theater has work to do. The great witch hunter is upon us. He is formidable. He is evil, but he can be stopped. He must be stopped, and together we can do the job. The future of the meaning of America is being decided, and I call upon each of us here tonight to put his hand into the making of that decision. The issue is simple: to surrender the most precious item in our democratic store­house — the Bill of Rights — into the hands of its despisers; or to turn and defend it with all the force and fire at our com­mand. There is but one course left consistent with honor, dig­nity, and human decency. Free men will always fight!

Ruby Dee

Ossie Davis appeared in numerous Broadway and Hollywood productions, including I’m Not Rappaport, The Defenders, The Stand, Jungle Fever, Evening Shade, and The Client. He was also the author of several plays, teleplays, and children’s books. He passed away in February 2005, still active in his work at the age of eighty-seven.

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