Bill Cosby

William Henry Cosby Jr. was born on July 12, 1937, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and is the oldest of four boys. His family were able to get by financially, but the family's money began to slip when his father began drinking heavily. His father eventually enlisted in the Navy and Cosby became like a parent to his brothers. His mother worked cleaning houses. He and his family ended up living in a low-income housing project in his neighborhood. At the age of 8, his brother James, the second oldest of the boys, died.

With money very tight for his family, Cosby started shining shoes to help out when he was 9 years old. Despite their financial hardships, his mother stressed the value of education and learning and often read to her sons. Cosby learned early on that humor could be a way to make friends and to get what he wanted. He excelled at making things up. As one of his teachers once noted, "William should become either a lawyer or an actor because he lies so well.''

In school, Cosby was bright but unmotivated. He liked to tell stories and jokes to his classmates more than he liked to do his schoolwork. One of his teachers encouraged him to put his performing talents to use in school plays. At home, Cosby listened to a variety of radio programs and started imitating comedians, such as Jerry Lewis, Sid Caesar, and Jack Benny.

While he was more interested in sports than academics, he was very active on his school's track and football teams, Cosby was placed in a high school for gifted students after scoring high on an IQ test. But he failed to apply himself, and ended up falling behind in his classes. He switched to Germantown High School, and even there he learned that he would have to repeat a grade. In frustration, Cosby dropped out of high school. He worked several odd jobs before joining the Navy in 1956.

During his military service, Cosby worked as a medical aide on ships in several hospitals and at other facilities. He also joined the Navy's track team where he excelled, especially in the high jump event. Cosby regretted dropping out of high school eventually earned his high school equivalency diploma while in the Navy. After leaving the Navy, he went to Temple University on a track scholarship.

While at Temple, Cosby worked as a bartender at a coffee house. He told jokes there, and eventually started filling in for the house comedian from time to time at a nearby club. He also performed as a warm-up act for his cousin's radio show and started performing at a place in New York City. Cosby found inspiration in the work comedian Dick Gregory, who often talked about racial issues in his routines. Early in his career, he also discussed race in his act, but he eventually dropped it from his performances choosing to focus on telling stories about more general and universal themes.

Cosby decided to drop out of college to pursue a career in stand-up comedy. In 1963, he made an appearance on “The Tonight Show”, which helped introduce him to a national audience. This led to a recording contract with Warner Bros. Records, who, in 1964, released his first comedy album, “Bill Cosby Is a Very Funny Fellow ... Right!” In 1965, he won a Grammy for best comedy performance. For the remainder of the 1960s, Cosby continued to release hit albums, winning another five Grammys.

In 1965, Cosby also helped show that an African American could play a leading role in a TV series. He starred with Robert Culp in the series “I Spy”. The two spies pretended to be a professional tennis player (Culp) traveling with his coach (Cosby). The show ran for three years, and Cosby received three Emmy Awards for his work. He became the first black actor to star in a dramatic role on network television. Not long after “I Spy” ended, Cosby starred in his own sitcom. “The Bill Cosby Show” ran for two seasons, from 1969 to 1971, and featured him as a gym teacher at a Los Angeles high school. After “The Bill Cosby Show” left the air, Cosby returned to his education. He began graduate work at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Cosby appeared on the educational children's series “The Electric Company”, recording several segments teaching reading skills to young children. He also developed the animated series “Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids”, which he based on many of his childhood experiences. The series ran from 1972 to 1979. In 1977, Cosby received a doctorate in urban education from the university, having written his dissertation on “Fat Albert”, it was titled "An Integration of the Visual Media Via 'Fat Albert And The Cosby Kids' Into the Elementary School Curriculum as a Teaching Aid and Vehicle to Achieve Increased Learning".

Turning to his life for inspiration, Cosby began working on a new television series. The sitcom focused on an upper-middle class African American couple with five children. Each of the children's characters shared some traits of their real-life counterparts. Married since 1964, Cosby and his real-life wife, Camille, had four daughters and one son. It took some time to find a TV network willing to air the series about an African American doctor, his lawyer wife, and their five children. In 1984, “The Cosby Show” debuted to favorable reviews and strong ratings.

“The Cosby Show” drew audiences with its warm humor and believable situations. Cosby's character, Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable, became one of the most popular dads in television history. He also served as a parental figure to his young co-stars on set. Phylicia Rashad co-starred with Cosby as his wife, Clair. After being the highest-rated sitcom on TV for five consecutive years, the show finally ended its run in 1992.

Over the show's eight-year run, Cosby found time for other projects: He appeared in several films, including “Leonard Part 6” (1987) and “Ghost Dad” (1990). In 1986, Cosby achieved another career milestone, becoming a bestselling author for the book “Fatherhood”, which sold more than 2.6 million copies. In addition, he enjoyed great popularity as a pitchman, appearing in commercials for such products as JELL-O.

Bill Cosby produced the “Cosby Show” spin-off sitcom “A Different World”, which aired from 1987 to 1993. The series originally centered on Denise Huxtable (Lisa Bonet) and the life of students at Hillman College, a fictional historically black college in the state of Virginia. After the first season, it came to Cosby's and the producers' attention that the series was not accurately portraying a historically black college and life on campus, so Debbie Allen, an alumna of Howard University and sister of Phylicia Rashad, was hired as the chief creative force to revamp the show. During the summer of 1988, Lisa Bonet announced that she was having a baby. Allen was in favor of having a young pregnant student in the show, but Cosby said that Lisa Bonet may be pregnant but not Denise Huxtable. He felt that viewers would not accept Denise as an unwed mother, having grown to know her as a "good girl" after four seasons of “The Cosby Show”. Thus it was decided that Denise would drop out of Hillman, return home to her family, and eventually travel to Africa throughout the fifth season of “The Cosby Show”, ensuring that viewers would not see a pregnant Denise.

While it was a spin-off from “The Cosby Show”, “A Different World” typically addressed issues that were avoided by “The Cosby Show”, such as race and class relations, or the Equal Rights Amendment. One episode that aired in 1990 was one of the first American network television episodes to address the HIV/AIDS epidemic. A good example of the show’s attempt to address black issues is the “Mammy Dearest” episode. In an attempt to celebrate black history, Whitley throws an event centered on reclaiming images of the black woman. However, she learns that her family actually owned slaves. Whitley tries to detach herself from the celebration, not feeling “sista” enough. The students put on a performance to show unity and power in reclaiming images of black women. Kim was asked to perform as Aunt Jemima but she struggled with the mammy image because of insults hurled towards her as a child. Kim performs in the show at the end of the episode. "A Different World" is the single most important cultural achievement for historically black colleges and universities in American history, and one of the top five pop cultural achievements for African Americans. It exposed the value and social construct of the HBCU and, more importantly, showed personable young African Americans from diverse backgrounds as intelligent, humorous, and introspective in their educational pursuits.

After the death of his son, Cosby started a series of children's picture books featuring a character named "Little Bill" in 1997, which also became a children's TV program. A frequent speaker at commencement ceremonies, Cosby shared his advice in 1999's “Congratulations! Now What?: A Book for Graduates.” He has received numerous awards for his work and social contributions, including the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award in 2003 and the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2009.

In May 2004, after receiving an award at the celebration of the 50th anniversary commemoration of the “Brown v. Board of Education” ruling, Cosby made public remarks critical of African Americans who put higher priorities on sports, fashion, and "acting hard" than on education, self-respect, and self-improvement, pleading for African American families to educate their children on the many different aspects of American culture. Cosby asked that African American parents teach their children better morals at a younger age. "Parenting needs to come to the forefront. If you need help and you don't know how to parent, we want to be able to reach out and touch you."

Cosby again came under criticism and was again unapologetic for his stance when he made similar remarks during a speech in July 1, 2004. During that speech, he scolded apathetic blacks for not assisting or concerning themselves with the individuals who are involved with crime or have counter-productive aspirations. He further described those who needed attention as blacks who "had forgotten the sacrifices of those in the Civil Rights Movement."

Cornel West, a philosopher and activist, defended Cosby and his remarks, saying, "he's speaking out of great compassion and trying to get folk to get on the right track, 'cause we've got some brothers and sisters who are not doing the right things, just like in times in our own lives, we don't do the right thing... He is trying to speak honestly and freely and lovingly, and I think that's a very positive thing."

In a 2008 interview, Cosby stood his ground against criticism and affirmed that African American parents were continuing to fail to teach proper standards of moral behavior. Cosby lectured black communities, usually at churches, about his frustrations with certain problems prevalent in underprivileged urban communities, such as “illegal drugs; teenage pregnancy; Black Entertainment Television; high-school dropouts; anti-intellectualism; gangsta rap; vulgarity; thievery; offensive clothing; vanity; parental alienation; single-parenting; and failing to live up to the ideals of Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Jr., and African Americans who preceded Generation X.”

Bill Cosby has also been openly critical of politicians in regards to their views on socioeconomic and racial issues. In a 2013 CNN interview regarding voting rights, Cosby stated "this Republican Party is not the Republican Party of 1863, of Abraham Lincoln, abolitionists and slavery, is not good. I think it's important for us to look at the underlying part of it. What is the value of it? Is it that some people are angry because my people no longer want to work for free?"