'In Living Color' Star Visits Mount Vernon Students

From the Mount Vernon schools

MOUNT VERNON, NY — Library and school district officials collaborated to bring TV star Tommy Davidson to the district Jan. 30 to meet with 90 students from Mount Vernon’s three high schools. Davidson, a comedian, was an original cast member of "In Living Color."

The students first had to read a portion of Davidson’s newly released memoir "Living in Color: What’s Funny About Me."

Abandoned as an infant on the streets of Greenville, Mississippi, Davidson was rescued by and grew up in a loving white family. He burst onto the scene in 1990 on the Emmy Award-winning show In Living Color, a pioneering sketch comedy show, featuring a multi-racial cast of actors and dancers.

At the forum, members of the audience asked Davidson questions about his life, career and perspectives on navigating racial barriers.

Introducing him, Superintendent of Schools Dr. Kenneth R. Hamilton told Davidson that he was fascinated by the book. “One of the things I came away with that I was really impressed with was the purity in which you grew up with not really knowing or understanding the difference between growing up black and growing up white; and the purity surrounding just recognizing people for who they really are regardless of the hue of their skin."

Davidson explained to the audience that he grew up never verbally identifying people by the color of their skin. “When I saw someone, I just said, ‘hello,’” he said. “When I was a kid, I just met people as people."

In an interview format with Dr. “TEA” Traci E. Alexander, Davidson said he grew up with dogs that had puppies, cats that had litters and horses that had colts and understood it was normal that colors of people didn’t necessarily match. “Whatever that was I thought I was a brown one of us and you didn’t even think about it.”

He said when he moved to Washington, D.C., just days after Martin Luther King’s death, he began to understand racial discrimination and tensions in the U.S. To learn more about what it meant to be ‘black’ and ‘white,’ he said he began to read, which helped him create an understanding of the strains of race in the times he was living in.

Davidson said it was his curiosity and his desire to understand the history of various countries and cultures of the world that drove him to read and eventually become empowered. “I just read through the history of everybody… until I knew where my place was in history.”

He said there were challenges to being smart in school. He wanted to spend time and energy learning and it wasn’t necessarily popular among his friends. “I was a lot less ‘cool’ because I wanted to be in school and I wanted to understand what was going on.”

After a question and answer session with the students, Davidson spent time signing autographs of his book and posing for photos.

“I believe having Tommy Davidson come to Mount Vernon has demonstrated a great collaboration between the school district and the library, has exposed our young people to the importance of reading and has celebrated how one can overcome life’s challenges,” said Oscar Davis Jr., President of the Mount Vernon Library Board of Trustees. “Wherever you come from doesn’t mean that will be how you are defined. This is an example of that.”