Ossie Davis, the actor, director, author and activist, will join Columbia University historian Manning Marable on Wednesday evening, Nov. 3 for a wide-ranging conversation on the African-American experience in the 20th century.

Sponsored by Columbia¹s Institute for Research in African-American Studies, which Marable directs, the conversation will take place at 7:30 P.M. in the Dag Hammarskjold Lounge, 6th floor, School of International and Public Affairs, 118th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. The event is free and open to the public.

Davis, together with his wife, Ruby Dee, has had a distinguished career in film and theater spanning a half century. Committed to art as a vehicle for social change, Davis¹s groundbreaking work on Broadway and in Hollywood has transformed the performing arts for minority actors, directors and audiences. Davis and his wife played key roles in the Civil Rights Movement from its early days in the 1950¹s.

A receipient of the 1995 Presidential Medal for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts, Davis most recently appeared in the films Dr. Dolittle with Eddie Murphy; Get on the Bus for director Spike Lee; I¹m Not Rappaport with Walter Matthau; 12 Angry Men on the Showtime Network and the CBC television series, Promised Land.

Marable is the author of numerous books, including Black Liberation in Conservative America (1997) and Black Leadership: Ideology, Politics and Culture in African-American History (1998). He is the editor of Souls, a quarterly journal of black urban culture, and a founding member of the Black Radical Congress, a grass-roots political organization created to revitalize the black freedom movement.