Ossie Davis

Ossie Davis (December 18, 1917 – February 4, 2005) was an African-American film actor, director, poet, playwright, writer, and social activist.

During World War II, Davis spent four years in the Army, mainly as a surgical technician in an African-American unit of a military hospital in Liberia, where he tended wounded soldiers and local inhabitants. He served in the Army Medical Corps in Liberia for nearly three years, helping to establish a hospital there for African-American soldiers -- the Army, of course, was still segregated. There he penned and performed a few shows for the troops.

Ossie Davis: an appreciation

• Ossie Davis, National Visionary
• NPR audio archive
• The Career of Ossie Davis - New York Times Slide Show

Links

• Ossie Davis & Ruby Dee: The Official Site
• Ossie Davis (1917-2005) at the New Georgia Encyclopedia
• Ossie Davis (1917-2005) on Wikipedia
• The Campaign for the Ossie Davis Endowment
• Black servicemen and servicewomen in World War II
• Tribute to Ossie Davis
• Ossie Davis
• Men in Movies: Ossie Davis

Side notes

In February, New Orleans' D-Day Museum – in cooperation with Tulane's Amistad Research Center and The Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University of New Orleans – hosted a first-ever national symposium on the African-American experience in World War II. Black vets celebrated their place in history, but also traded with historians stories of discrimination, protest and reprisal. Even keynote speaker Ossie Davis revealed a deadly racial incident he witnessed while stationed in Liberia. The symposium title, "Double Victory: Fighting on Two Fronts" alludes to a grassroots civil rights movement that called for "Victory at Home, Victory Abroad." The movement had no leaders, but some of its adherents were so passionate that they burned or carved a "double V" on their chests.

"Troublemakers" in the controversial 364th Regiment had those "double Vs," according to Army intelligence files.

http://www.bestofneworleans.com/archives/2001/0410/covs.html