Sammy Davis, Yes, You Could! Thanks For The Memories

On this day, December 8, on what would have been your 90th birthday, I would like to say "thank you" to one Sammy Davis, Jr.

Thanks, Mr. D, for the inspiration I found in your life story in "Yes I Can," my favorite book as a child. 

Thank you for matching an ideal with reality by being so charming and forthcoming in an interview in 1982. That remains the absolute highlight of my career and I cherish the experience beyond all other interviews I've done.

Lastly, thank you for sharing your many gifts and so much love with this nation while enduring the slings and arrows of being a black man in a country that didn't always love you back. You walked a harrowing path, or should I say danced along it, for decade after decade.

You made history, by integrating Miami Beach's entertainment scene, Vegas, by headlining on TV shows.

Local citizens' counsels' heads exploded, Klan klaverns threatened, TV sponsors rebelled, but you never stopped pushing forward. You integrated an industry, a mindset, with the force of your talent and willpower, all 100 pounds of nothing but astounding energy and grit, grace and humor.

How you did it I will never, ever know. Walking through the back doors of joints, through the kitchens of hotels and casinos, down back alleys rather than on red carpets. Entertaining in places where you could pull in patrons by the thousands, but not pull up on cover on a bed in a room you were barred from sleeping in, or sip from one drink in a bar or restaurant you could not patronize. The color green was appreciated; the color black was ostracized, spit upon, dehumanized. Dance and sing for us, oh, talented one, then get on to the back of the bus. With a smile.


Underneath that smile, there was a determination that made a giant out of a 90-pound flyweight. When your pending marriage ti Mae Britt was announced, the South rose up again. Even over 100 years after the Civil War, a marriage between a black man and a white woman could bring hatred to a boil, and worse. And fo
r a celebrity, the repercussions were immense. Through in politics, and the third rails were everywhere.

You, Frank Sinatra, Peter Lawford and your gang (yes, Marilyn Monroe, too) were famously Kennedy Men. And because you were, The Rat Pack became a campaign issue an issue in a presidential candidate.

And you became a target. Literally. The Klan and other bigots hiding behind sheets and anonymity threatended violence. And they made it necessary, in your eyes, to prepare. You already carried guns, on the hips, holstered and at the ready --

sixshooters were part of the show as you performed flashy gun twirling tricks and quick draws you used to awe John Wayne with. You’d always dreamed of being a western movie star, of outdrawing the bad guys. Little did these real bad guys know that if they acted on their hatred, this cowboy in the white hat had real bulltes in those sixshooters, ready to protect his territory on stages from Miami to Vegas. If they attempted to drag you from, or kill you on a Miami or Vegas stage, they would have met not Big John, but Little Sam. Lord have mercy!

Your battles were many, your allies, too. Mr. S -- he was always there. He told his TV sponsors that if they wanted to walk, they could, because he was going to have you as a guest on his television show, come Hell or high water. This was no small thing in the 50s. It’s a major reason I love him as I love you.

Not all was perfection. In your book, “Yes I Can,” you described Frankie’s tears when he told how JFK’s camp asked him not to stand up for you at your wedding. You understood and stood by your friend the way he could not bring himself to do so for you.

How that must have hurt. But you persevered, time after time after time, through insult and injury, indifference and indignities. You did so because you loved what you did, and refused to be swayed from doing what you loved. The stage was your solace, where the only colors that mattered where the shadings of the footlights, the sequences, the greasepaint.

So when I think of the piddling pitfalls I must endure, and at times, when think I cannot, I often think of you, Mr. D. I think back to when I curled up while reading your story. I think back to 1982 when you flashed that smile while recounting your life, the ups, the downs, the “kicks,” and the licks. Then I look at my stuff and realize, by comparison, this ain't nothing.

I got this.

Yes I Can.