Avery Brooks

Avery Franklin Brooks was born on October 2, 1948, in Evansville, Indiana, to Eva Lydia Brooks, a choral conductor and music instructor, and Samuel Brooks, a singer and tool and die worker. When Brooks was eight years old, the family relocated to Gary, Indiana, after his father was laid off from International Harvester. Music was a constant presence in the household: his mother was among the first African-American women to earn a master's degree in music at Northwestern University, and his father sang with the Wings Over Jordan Choir, an a cappella spiritual ensemble that performed on CBS radio from 1937 to 1947. His maternal grandfather, Samuel Travis Crawford, graduated from Tougaloo College in 1901 and was also a singer, and his maternal uncle Samuel Travis Crawford was a member of the Delta Rhythm Boys. Brooks attended Indiana University and Oberlin College before earning a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Fine Arts from Rutgers University in 1976, becoming the first African American to receive an MFA in acting and directing from that institution.

Brooks is an actor, director, singer, narrator, and educator whose Broadway career spanned from 1979 to 1995. His most prominent stage work centered on Phillip Hayes Dean's play Paul Robeson, in which he portrayed the life of the singer, actor, and civil-rights activist in a one-man biographical drama. Brooks performed the role at the Westwood Playhouse in Los Angeles, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and the Longacre Theater on Broadway. He also appeared in Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?, both on and off Broadway, and his Broadway credits additionally include The Exonerated. His earlier theater work in the 1970s included The Offering, A Photograph: A Study of Cruelty, and a 1979 appearance in Spell #7 at the Public/Anspache Theater in New York City. He went on to star as Othello at the Folger Shakespeare Festival in 1985, perform in Fences at the Repertory Theater of St. Louis in 1990, and reprise Othello at the Washington Shakespeare Theater in 1990 to 1991.

On television, Brooks first gained wide attention in 1985 when he was cast as Hawk on the ABC detective series Spenser: For Hire, based on Robert Parker's mystery novels. After three seasons, the character's popularity led to a 1989 spinoff, A Man Called Hawk, for which Brooks also composed the musical score for the final two episodes. He returned to the role of Hawk in four subsequent television movies: Spenser: Ceremony, Spenser: Pale Kings and Princes, Spenser: The Judas Goat, and Spenser: A Savage Place. In 1984, Brooks received critical praise for his featured role in the PBS American Playhouse production Half Slave, Half Free: Solomon Northup's Odyssey, directed by Gordon Parks. He starred as Uncle Tom in Showtime's 1987 adaptation of Uncle Tom's Cabin, earning an Ace Award nomination for best actor in a movie or miniseries, and appeared in the 1988 television movie Roots: The Gift alongside LeVar Burton, Kate Mulgrew, and Tim Russ.

Brooks is perhaps most widely recognized for his role as Commander, later Captain, Benjamin Sisko on the syndicated science-fiction series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which ran for seven seasons from 1993 to 1999. He won the role by beating approximately 100 actors from all racial backgrounds, becoming the first Black-American captain to lead a Star Trek series. In addition to acting, Brooks directed nine episodes of the series, including "Far Beyond the Stars," an episode addressing racial injustice. He was nominated for a Saturn Award and two NAACP Image Awards for the role. Brooks also appeared as Dr. Bob Sweeney in the Academy Award-nominated film American History X. In 2001, he narrated and appeared in a series of commercials for IBM, and he provided voice work for the animated series Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child and the Disney animated series Gargoyles, receiving an additional NAACP Image Award nomination for the former.

As a singer and musician, Brooks is a deep baritone who has performed on stage with Butch Morris, Lester Bowie, and Jon Hendricks. He recorded an album with saxophonist James Spaulding, James Spaulding Plays the Legacy of Duke Ellington, released on Storyville in 1977. In 1985, Brooks took the lead role in Anthony Davis's opera X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, and in 1992 he sang the role of Cinque in Davis's opera Tania. He performed at the Paris Banlieues Bleues Festival in 2005 and with the Springfield Symphony Orchestra at Springfield Symphony Hall in 2016. His debut solo album, Here, a collection of jazz and blues covers and spoken word, was released in 2006. In 2020, he was featured on The DX Experiment's debut album, Black In My Own Way, an album of experimental music with spoken word.

Brooks has maintained a sustained career in education and cultural leadership. Following his appointment in 1976 as an associate professor of theater arts at Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, he also taught at Oberlin College and Case Western Reserve University. From 1993 to 1996, he served as artistic director for the National Black Arts Festival in association with Rutgers University, an internationally recognized annual festival held in Atlanta, Georgia, celebrating African-American culture and people of African descent. He has also conducted extensive work with the Smithsonian Institution's Program in Black American Culture. In recognition of his contributions to the theater, Brooks was inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Theatre and received the William Shakespeare Award for Classical Theatre from the Shakespeare Theatre Company. He has received a total of three NAACP Image Award nominations across his career.