Veteran Emmy Award-winning actor Al Freeman Jr. has died. He was 78-years-old.
The son of African-American stage actor Al Freeman (1884-1956), Al Freeman Jr. was born Albert Cornelius Freeman Jr. on March 21, 1934, in San Antonio, Texas. The cause of death, which occurred Aug. 9, 2012, has not been disclosed.
His career, as an actor primarily, as well as a writer and director, spanned several decades, dating back to the 1950s.
He made his big screen debut in 1960’s melodrama “The Rebel Breed.”
Most notably, in 1967, Freeman Jr. co-starred with Shirley Knight in the film version of Leroi Jones’ (Amiri Baraka’s) off-Broadway play Dutchman, in a performance that earned him excellent reviews, and further attention for his portrayal of a Black subway passenger victimized by a frantic, white woman.
Dutchman would later be adapted for the screen, with Freeman Jr. and Knight reprising their roles — a film we’ve featured on this site on more than one occasion, and will likely feature again shortly, in light of today’s news.
Three years later, Freeman Jr. co-starred with Patty Duke in the landmark TV movie, “My Sweet Charlie” (1970). He played a volatile New York City lawyer stranded in a small Texas town with a white, unwed mother.
Freeman Jr. is likely best known to daytime-drama fans for his lengthy stint as Lt. Ed Hall on “One Life to Live” — a role that won him a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor In A Drama Series in 1979, and setting his place in history as the first African-American actor to win that specific award.
And more recently, he’ll also be remembered for his portrayal of Elijah Muhammad in Spike Lee’s 1992 opus “Malcolm X” — a role he first played in the 1979 miniseries, “Roots: The Next Generations.” He received an NAACP image award for his movie portrayal.
Freeman was also a screenwriter, penning screenplays for Ossie Davis’ “Countdown at Kusini” (1976), and was a director himself, helming (and starring in) the 1971 feature A Fable, from a script written by Amiri Baraka, based on his own play (“The Slave: A Fable”), about a Black radical who violently and fatally torments his white ex-wife and children, after they start a new family with a white man.
On TV, Freeman Jr. appeared in serials like “The Cosby Show” and “Homicide: Life on the Street.”
His Broadway theatre credits include “Blues for Mister Charlie” (1964), “Look to the Lilies” (1970) and “Medea” (1974).
Up until his death, Freeman Jr. was a professor at Howard University in the Department of Theatre Arts, teaching acting. He served as chairman/artistic director of the department for six years.
