The Complicated, Talented Life of Sammy Davis, Jr.

While African Americans were embracing their roots and growing out their Afros, Davis continued to wear his hear conked (greased down to resemble a white mans hair style). When he hugged the enormously unpopular President Richard Nixon on TV, a liberal-leaning nation gasped.

And when Jack Benny asked him on a golf course what his handicap was, he replied, “Talk about handicap I’m a one-eyed Negro Jew.” Many objected to his good-natured acceptance of all the racial baiting he endured, especially after he married white Swedish actress May Britt.

But dwelling on how he carried his color alone would be unfair. He supported the civil-rights cause quietly some said too quietly but no less passionately. He was a swingin’, cool cat, who sang to the stars and whose acting could bring you to tears. His was a complicated life, but also an enormously talented one.