Actors Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee are among the six honorees of this year’s Kennedy Center Honors. [The others are composer John Williams, soprano Joan Sutherland, actor-director Warren Beatty and singer-composer Elton John.]
They will join an elite list of creative types who, since 1978, the Kennedy Center Honors have celebrated for “lifetime contributions to American culture through the performing arts.” Honorees are feted at a White House reception, a gala dinner and a televised, black-tie tribute, not to mention their recognition as national treasures.
Three generations have watched Davis and Dee perform their magic on stage, film, TV and radio. As young adults, my parents would have come to know them from Loraine Hansberry’s “Raisin in the Sun” [1959].
I remember them in “The Sheriff” [1971] and “Roots” [1979].
My children were introduced to them in “Do the Right Thing” [1989] and “Jungle Fever” [1991].
They’ve been at it for 60 years – both as performers and as a husband and wife. Indeed, when it comes to bodies of work that spoke to or affected American culture, it’s hard to think of anyone more deserving than Davis and Dee, whether separately or together.
But, the Kennedy Center Honors will give only a nod to the couple’s real impact – namely, as exemplars of black integrity and power in the finest sense. They did more than wonderfully entertain; Davis and Dee used their celebrity to promote social justice, particularly in the civil rights movement.
At nearly every major turn in the movement of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, Davis or Dee or both were there. Rather than stay cozy and comfy in their privilege, they marched and agitated. They took a stand and, in so doing, they took a decided risk.
These days, when certain A-list black performers shy from social and political activism, such daring might cost them a coveted role or box office receipts.
In those days, when Davis and Dee were front and center, it could have cost them their lives. Forget boycotts; night riders and bombs in the living room were a worry then.
I cherish them for their courage and their caring. And I wonder what they must think of the new crop of blacks, so many of whom are either demoralized and self-defeating or, at the other extreme, so disengaged from black life that they wouldn’t think of embracing it, bolting from anything that smacks of “keeping it real.”
Considering that, I wonder if Davis and Dee believe the chances they took were worth it.
Then again, I suppose they must be heartened by the millions who are running behind them, hands outstretched, to grab the baton and finish the race. These are the ones who pay the most honest tribute to Davis and Dee – by upholding their dignity; by maintaining excellence in their work; by recognizing that the struggle has only morphed, not disappeared; and by defying the deadly stereotypes, not by mimicking whiteness but by asserting the best of blackness.
That’s what Davis and Dee really contributed to American culture – living proof that you can be both a superb individual achiever and caretaker for a larger cause.
When you have power, whether political, financial or artistic, you owe it to the powerless to wield it for their sakes.
And that, in becoming what you want to be, you don’t have to forsake who you’ve always been.
