OEPBS CELEBRATES
BLACK HISTORY
MONTH
The American Spirit
KOAP-10
6:30 PM
MON. FEB. 16
Today is ours - at last_______
By Ossie Davis
W ith Ossie and Ruby
i The World of My America
SUN.
FEB. 15.
Our cultural herit
age is reflected in our
music comedy dance
and drama Join Ossie
Davis Ruby Dee and
their guests - America s
artists writers
and performers
Public TV Entertains
Experience 200 years
of black American history
in a powerful one-woman
snow actress Pauiene
Myers creates over twenty-
five diverse characters
Don t miss her stunning
moving performance
Public TV Captivates
10 PM
To Be Young,
Gifted and Black
Feel the joy and pain
of a black artist in America
Great Performances re
creates the story of Raisin
in the Sun playwright
Lorraine Hansberry
Starring Ruby Dee and
Claudia McNeil
—
ON RADIO
Public TV inspires
8 PM
W i
Only The Ball
was w h ite
[J
P-
i
H
Denied stardom because
of their race America s
best Black baseball
players formed their
own Negro league
Paul Winfield
narrates this docu
mentary about the ac
complishments of these
outstanding athletes
Public TV Remembers
9:30 PM
T H IS A D M A D E P O S S IB L E R
3 nights a week
Fri 10 PM to midnight
Sat 7 PM to midnight
Sun 8 PM to midnight
KOAP FM 91.5
TH E C O R P O R A T IO N F O R P U B L IC B R O A D C A S T IN G
Black specials
on Channel 10
With Ossie & Ruby
Charlie Smith and the Fritter Tree
The World of My America
To Be Young, Gifted and Black
Only The Ball Was White...
The Black Dyad
O u r ne» p u b lic te le visio n series, " W it h Ossie <t
Ruby, ” is the natural cu lm in a tio n o f 20 years o f our
lives. M y w ife. Ruby Dee, and I came along at a tim e
when being Black was not yet fashionable, and there
was very little in the professional theater for us to do ex
cept silver trays and announce that the grists w o u ld n 't
hold the heat. In our first year o f marriage, Ruby and I
together earned less than $1,000. We were starving to
death, and it was obvious to us there must be some other
way to earn a living
During the early 50s, in addition to being unemployed
because we were B lack, we also learned that we were
unemployed because we were red. Some o f our C a lifo r
nia friends had been kicked out o f H ollyw ood because
o f the “ McCarthyite” drive, and some o f our New York
friends like Paul Robeson, C'anda Lee and John Henry
F a u lk were also targets o f the w itch h unts. O u r
association with them made us targets, also.
Yet, out o f this dire circumstance came an o p p o r
tunity that led directly to " W ith Ossie A R uby." Some
o f the performers who were out o f work found a way to
pick up an extra buck by g ivin g readings o f lite ra ry
m a te ria l. So we went a ro u n d to churches, schools,
synogogues, and union halls, and we’ d give dramatic in
terpretations o f Dostoevsky and Yeats and other literary
masters, fo r which we w ould be paid $15 or $20. Back
then, that was a lot o f money - at least to us.
Through this experience. Ruby and I found there was
a separate body o f material we could perform that came
out o f our past experiences and out o f our ethnic iden
tific a tio n . It was then called Negro L ite ra tu re and in
cluded the work o f Langston Hughes, Phyllis Wheatley,
Paul Lawrence D unbar and others. Most Black fo lks,
p a rticu la rly those who came up fro m the south, knew
this m aterial very well. I knew it because I had come
fro m G eorgia, and each year d u rin g Negro H is to ry
W eek, we w ould study Black writers in great detail. So
Ruby and I began to perform dram atic interpretations
o f this m aterial in Black churches, at Black weddings
and at Black funerals, and, somehow, we survived.
A quantitative change in our lives occured which was
based on three events. First o f all. Ruby and I became
involved w ith " A Raisin In The Sun, " one o f the First
plays w ritten by a Black and directed by a Black that
was a smash on Broadway. Because o f that play, our
status, prestige and price went up. This led to the second
m a jo r event -- w ritin g my ow n p la y , " P u r lie V ic
torious. " It, too, became a talked about event, and it
fixed o u r place as people o f significance in the Black
literary experience.
The th ird th in g th a t happened, and I suppose the
most im portant thing, was a direct result o f the Supreme
C o u rt’ s decision in 1954 which determined that the civil
rights battles o f the 60s w ould largely be fought in the
area o f education. As a result o f that decision, colleges
and universities found themselves absolutely flatfooted
when they were in c lin e d o r re q u ire d by law to do
something about Black studies. They needed people to
take the material o f f the page and dramatize it so Black
and w hite students alike w ould know what was meant
by Black literature. As a result, we became very popular
on college campuses throughout the country.
D uring this tim e, there began to be suggestions and
proposals fo r Ruby and me to do our thing on records,
ra d io and te le v is io n . We met executives in o ffic e s ,
talked to studio heads, worked with agents, and they all
said, “ w o u ld n 't it be m arvelous i f you could do that
s tu ff you do on campuses on a televison show ?’ ’ In
1973, CBS gave us a special called "T o d a y Is Ours, ”
and K ra ft Foods sponsored a w eekly ra d io show on
which Ruby and I read poetry and did interviews. The
program was quite successful.
A fte r the radio show ended, we continued our college
tours, made motion pictures and appeared on television
shows. On one occasion a few years ago, I was invited to
public television station KER A in Dallas to serve as host
fo r a six-p ro g ra m segment o f the " H e r e ’s To Y our
H e a lth " series. A t K E R A , I met a rather quiet young
man. Bob Ray Sanders, Black like m yself, who asked