Sammy Davis Jr(35)

Dad and Lucille Ball in an episode of Here’s Lucy aptly called, “Lucy and Sammy Davis, Jr.”



The Hollywood Palace—Pop sang with Diahann Carroll in a 1968 episode.



My parents in the early ’60s


“Did it work?” I asked.

“Heck no,” Dad said, “The only thing that worked was one day, my father sat me down and said to me with a despairing voice, ‘Son, you ain’t gonna get away from it till you die.’ He was right. The roots of racism were still deeply grounded; the weeds were hacked here and there, but the weeds still grew at a terrorizing pace.”

Things became more frightening when my father’s grandmother—Mama—passed away during the run of Golden Boy. I was quite young, so young. Both Dad and Mom were devastated. Reflecting on this time, my dad said, “Mama was my rock. After my real mother abandoned me as a baby, Mama was everything. I was beyond crushed when she died,” Pop said.

“I wish I had been old enough to know her better,” I said.

“Mama lived with us on Evanview Drive for a spell back in the day. Then, I bought her Judy Garland’s old house in the Hollywood Hills. I didn’t buy the house as some contribution to racial harmony—but it was a beautiful extra that the neighbors could see a prosperous black family and say, ‘Look, it’s not really true that those colored folks live eighty of ‘em in a room.’” Pop smiled.

“One Christmas, I walked in with a gift for Mama. I handed her keys to a new car. I said, ‘Hold on, Mama, don’t move!’ I ran outside to open the garage door, all excited to show her the new car. Smeared in paint across the garage door was: ‘Merry Christmas Nigger!’ I wasn’t surprised, but it broke my heart, truly. I just wanted to see Mama smile that Christmas, that’s all,” Pop explained with dismay.



Dad’s appearance on the controversial TV show All in the Family was one of his most memorable. He actually sat in Archie’s chair!


“I’m sorry, Pop,” I replied.

“One time I was doing some nightclub somewhere and a white supremacist mob was outside chanting, ‘Where’s that nigger Jew boy?’ I walked outside and started to sing ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin . . .’—danced a lick, killed them with talent! That’s the only way I knew how to fight it.”

“I’m proud of you,” I said.

Dad said, “My father’s voice rings in my ears every single day of my life. I used to call your grandfather ‘scrambled eggs’—he shook so much after he got Parkinson’s disease. When your grandfather passed, I remember thinking at the funeral, at last, my father is free to be a man, not a colored man, just a man.





Dad and President Nixon. Nixon was signing a document appointing him to the National Advisory Council on Economic Opportunity, 1971.





Pop and Richard Nixon in the Oval Office, 1973



With Edward Cox, Tricia Nixon Cox, Julie Nixon Eisenhower, and David Eisenhower, at the Republican National Convention, August 1972


“Popsicle, you’re not going anywhere. We’re kicking this Davis style, remember?” I replied.

“Your grandfather always called you his ‘only-est’ granddaughter,” my father muttered. He was fading.

“I know, Dad.”

“Think I’m going to take a quick nap, baby. Gas tank is on low.” Pop took his hand off his trachea tube and gently curled up in a ball, closing his eyes.

“I’ll be here when you wake,” I said.

The most talked-about kiss in television history was delivered by my father on All in the Family in 1972. Pop planted a kiss on the right cheek of Archie Bunker, the narrow-minded bigot played by Carroll O’Connor. It was my father who changed the weak script ending, and set the country ablaze, underscoring the hypocrisy of the times.



Pop was a gun enthusiast. He even won fast-draw competitions.





Dad on Laugh-In, one of the most popular TV shows of its day. I thought he was hilarious in it and he obviously enjoyed himself filming it.


Five years earlier, in 1967, Pop planted one of the first black-white kisses in US television history. NBC broadcast a variety special entitled Movin’ with Nancy. In addition to the Emmy Award–winning musical performances, the show is notable for Nancy Sinatra and my father greeting each other with a kiss.

In the early 1970s, Pop startled the nation when he physically hugged Republican President Nixon during a live television broadcast. The incident was controversial and Dad received a hostile reaction from his peers. My father also performed on a USO tour of Vietnam at the behest of President Nixon’s administration.