Comedy / Film & TV / Theatre & dance
David Alan Grier
born 1956 · actor, comedian
In Living Color star and Tony-winning stage actor from Detroit, a Cass Tech graduate whose family marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in the city in 1963.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan
age 70- Detroit years
- 1956–1974
- Field
- Comedy, Film & TV, Theatre & dance
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
David Alan Grier was born in Detroit on June 30, 1956, one of three children of a schoolteacher and the psychiatrist William H. Grier, co-author of the 1968 study Black Rage. He grew up in a family engaged in the civil rights movement: when he was a boy they marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in Detroit's 1963 march, where King delivered an early version of his 'I Have a Dream' speech. He spent at least second grade, in 1962, at the Roeper City and Country School in Bloomfield Hills, graduated from Cass Technical High School, and earned a degree in radio, television and film at the University of Michigan in 1978, where a campus street musician inspired his later character Calhoun Tubbs. After Yale's drama school he found success on Broadway, in films, and above all on In Living Color, and in 2022 he won a Tony for A Soldier's Play.
Highlights
- Sketch star of In Living Color (1990–1994), including 'Men on...' and Calhoun Tubbs
- Reverend Leon Lonnie Love on Martin (1993–1997)
- Tony Award for A Soldier's Play; earlier nominations for The First, Race and Porgy and Bess
- Volpi Cup at Venice for his film debut in Streamers (1983)
- Films include A Soldier's Story, Boomerang and Jumanji
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 3
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Studied here · 1962
The Roeper School (lower school campus)
Grier attended the school, then called Roeper City and Country School, in second grade in 1962.
Studied here · early 1970s
Cass Technical High School
Grier graduated from Detroit's elite public high school before going to the University of Michigan. The school now uses a 2005 building next to the demolished original.
Related place · 1963
Cobo Arena
The June 23, 1963 march down Woodward ended here with King's early 'I Have a Dream' speech; Grier's family took part in the march.