Ossie Davis

CTL-E-6013 · Person · other · 1917–2005

VERIFIED evidence grade — master store (canonical CSV)

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-03295 · provenance: canonical master store (CSV), record CTL-P-1225 + build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-6013. Master record source: CTL seed 2026-10-16 — UNVERIFIED, verify before public citation.

Ossie Davis (born Raiford Chatman Davis, December 18, 1917, in Cogdell, Georgia; died February 4, 2005, in Miami Beach, Florida) was an actor, playwright, director and social activist central to twentieth-century African American theatre and film. Raised in Waycross, Georgia, he attended Howard University for three years before leaving for New York, where he joined Harlem's Rose McClendon Players. After Army service in World War II he made his Broadway debut in Jeb in 1946, where he met Ruby Dee, whom he married in 1948; their artistic partnership became one of the American stage's most distinguished. Davis took over the role of Walter Lee Younger in A Raisin in the Sun, wrote the play Purlie Victorious (1961), and directed films including Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970). He and Dee served as master and mistress of ceremonies for the 1963 March on Washington, and he spoke at the funerals of both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Late in his career he appeared in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X. The couple jointly received the National Medal of Arts in 1995 and a Kennedy Center Honor in 2004.

The record

• Also known as: Raiford Chatman Davis
• Role(s): creator
• Known for: Creator of Cotton Comes to Harlem

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Scan Tail Wave 3 — 747 Program, Wave 10; third Scan Tail packet at the founder's 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): no Ossie Davis entity in the live graph at 3,683 entities (exact / normalized / alias + token containment); ID CTL-E-6013 free. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger, Tier 4 — Scan Tail Wave 2 packet ordered reserve, position 8 of 25 (corpus-gap-candidates-2026-10-15.json ranked clean survivor #1005). The scan supplied the NAME STRING ONLY; no fact in this record is sourced to it (CTL-GOV-004). SCOPE GATE: PASS — a foundational actor-playwright-activist of Black theatre and film, with a Howard University line into the graph; national-canon core scope. Vital status: DECEASED — died February 4, 2005, aged 87 (Britannica; U.S. House findings on Congress.gov). Tribute treatment in the Curator's Judgment. STATISTICS (sourced, dated): Broadway debut 1946 (Jeb); Purlie Victorious 1961; directed Cotton Comes to Harlem 1970 (Britannica). Joint honors with Ruby Dee: National Medal of Arts 1995; Kennedy Center Honor 2004 (Britannica). Congressional findings describe a career of over fifty years portraying African American life on stage, television and film (H.R. 4834, 110th Congress). MEDIA: photo HELD (Ossie Davis photograph at the 1963 March on Washington (the image carried on his reference pages) named as candidate; no file-page verification in this pass); chart FILLED (charts/chart-ctl-e-6013-ossie-davis.svg); video HELD (no matching-entity CTL Short or verified-rights archival video staged); audio HELD (no rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Non-place record; no map attaches at the entity layer.) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (CTL-created SVG (black / deep red / gold) built only from this record's sourced facts) | video = HELD (Shorts Link Map entries under the Davis surname are other people — Short #66, "Miles Davis — Kind of Blue (195) | audio = HELD (No audiobook excerpt or author recording with a CTL rights basis was staged in this pass.)

Relationships

• Do the Right Thing — starred in
  Ossie Davis appeared in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing (CTL-E-5469), the first of several Lee films Britannica lists for his late career.

Referenced by

• Cotton Comes to Harlem — authored by → this record
• Howard University — has alumnus → this record

Sources

• Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Ossie Davis" (accessed 2026-10-16) — born December 18, 1917, Cogdell, Georgia; died February 4, 2005, Miami Beach, Florida; Howard University attendance and departure after three years; Rose McClendon Players; 1946 Broadway debut in Jeb; marriage to Ruby Dee in 1948; A Raisin in the Sun and Purlie Victorious; Cotton Comes to Harlem; the Spike Lee films; National Medal of Arts 1995 and Kennedy Center Honor 2004, both jointly with Dee — https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ossie-Davis (primary source · build store)
• U.S. House bill text, Ossie Davis Congressional Gold Medal Act, H.R. 4834, 110th Congress (Congress.gov, accessed 2026-10-16) — congressional findings: born December 18, 1917, Cogdell, Georgia; died aged 87 in Miami, Florida, on February 4, 2005; actor, playwright, producer, screenwriter, director and author; advocate for social justice over a fifty-year career — https://www.congress.gov/bill/110th-congress/house-bill/4834/text (primary source · build store)
• Wikipedia, "Ossie Davis" (accessed 2026-10-16) — birth name Raiford Chatman Davis and the clerical origin of the name Ossie; years active 1939–2005 — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossie_Davis (build store)
• https://catalog.afi.com/Film/23443-COTTON-COMES-TO-HARLEM?cxt=filmography (verification source · master store)

Evidence note (master store)

Cotton Comes to Harlem was directed by Ossie Davis — the AFI Catalog entry records the contemporaneous Los Angeles Times announcement calling Davis the production's 'first-time director', NAACP nominations including 'Director of the Year (Ossie Davis)', and popularity 'credited to Ossie Davis's direction'. This establishes the stored pairing (stored as 'Creator of Cotton Comes to Harlem'; the established credit is director). Checked 2026-10-17.

More person records

• Elijah Muhammad
• Elijah Thurston
• Elinor Tatum
• Elise Malary
• Elix Skipper
• Elizabeth Lindsay Davis

Browse the full directory: all entity records

Record CTL-E-6013 · Combined Graph record U-03295 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 4 sources · 3 mapped relationships.
Directory: all entity records · the knowledge graph

Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

Cite this record

Citation guidance for teachers, journalists, and funders: How to Cite Us.

From the Archive

The archive in pictures

The people, places, and institutions this work documents. Photographs from the CultureTechLens research record — rights-cleared, credited, and cited like everything else here.