Davis was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1994 and received the National Medal of Arts in 1995, Kennedy Center Honors in 2004.

Davis also acted in The Hill (1965), A Man Called Adam (1966), Lets Do It Again (1975), School Daze (1988), Do the Right Thing (1989), Grumpy Old Men (1993), The Client (1994), and Dr. Dolittle (1998).

[6][7] He inadvertently became known as "Ossie" when his birth certificate was being filed and his mother's pronunciation of his name as "R. C. Davis" was misheard by the Clinch County courthouse clerk.

[8] Davis experienced racism from an early age when the KKK threatened to shoot his father, whose job they felt was too advanced for a black man to have.

When Davis wanted to pursue a career in acting, he ran into the usual roadblocks that black people suffered at that time as they generally could only portray stereotypical characters such as Stepin Fetchit.

Davis portrayed the title character Purlie Victorious Judson, acting opposite Ruby Dee and Alan Alda.

Howard Taubman for The New York Times wrote of the play: "It is marvelously exhilarating to hear the Negro speak for himself, especially when he does so in the fullness of his native gusto and the enveloping heartiness of his overflowing laughter.

Along with Bill Cosby and Poitier, Davis was one of a handful of black actors able to find commercial success while avoiding stereotypical roles prior to 1970, which also included a significant role in the Otto Preminger directed drama The Cardinal (1963) and the Sidney Lumet prison drama The Hill (1965).

He acted in the musical drama A Man Called Adam (1966), performing alongside Sammy Davis Jr., Louis Armstrong, and Cicely Tyson.

He played Joseph Lee in the Sydney Pollack-directed western drama The Scalphunters, acting alongside Burt Lancaster and Shelley Winters.

As a playwright, Davis wrote Paul Robeson: All-American, which is frequently performed in theatre programs for young audiences.

He also found work as a commercial voice-over artist and served as the narrator of the early-1990s CBS sitcom Evening Shade, starring Burt Reynolds, where he also played one of the residents of a small southern town.

Davis also appeared in several popular 1990s films, including the studio comedies Grumpy Old Men (1993) starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, and Cop and a Half (1993) with Burt Reynolds, as well as the John Grisham drama film The Client (1994) starring Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones.

In 1999, he appeared as a theater caretaker in the Trans-Siberian Orchestra film The Ghosts of Christmas Eve, which was released on DVD two years later.

[15][16] Their son Guy Davis is a blues musician and former actor, who appeared in the film Beat Street (1984) and the daytime soap opera One Life to Live.

[19] Speakers included Davis's children and grandchildren, as well as Alan Alda, Burt Reynolds, Amiri Baraka, Avery Brooks, Angela Bassett, Spike Lee, Attallah Shabazz, Tavis Smiley, Maya Angelou, Sonia Sanchez, Harry Belafonte, and former president Bill Clinton, among many others.

DuBois, Eleanor Roosevelt, A. Philip Randolph, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, Thurgood Marshall, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, and so many, many more.

At the time of one of our most anxious and conflicted moments, when 'Our America' was torn apart by seething issues of race, Ossie paused, at the tomb of one of our noblest warriors, and in the eulogy he delivered, insured that history would clearly understand the voice of Black people, and what Malcolm X meant to us in the African-American struggle for freedom....

It is hard to fathom that we will no longer be able to call on his wisdom, his humor, his loyalty and his moral strength to guide us in the choices that are yet to be made and the battles that are yet to be fought.

"[22] In 1989, Ossie Davis and his wife, actress/activist Ruby Dee, were named to the NAACP Image Awards Hall of Fame.