1/30/2024 0 Comments Omar from the wireWilliams mined these personal tragedies to serve his art. Williams Evan Agostini/Invision/APįriends and fellow artists pay tribute to Michael K. “It’s an everyday struggle for me, but I’m fighting.” “Addiction doesn’t go away,” he told the New York Times in 2017. He also battled substance abuse and discussed this openly. Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1966, Williams, like many young Black men of a certain age, described battling feelings of low self-worth. Williams brought intelligence, playfulness and leading-man romantic appeal (to women and to men) in the service of telling the story of a character whose life circumstances, if not personal choices, echoed his own childhood and reflected his own struggles. He shared with me his secret fears then stepped out into his acting with true courage, acting in the face of fear, not in the absence of it.” The viral clip of Williams dancing in a New York City park is simply a sublime expression of Black joy. Wendell Pierce, who played police detective Bunk Moreland on “The Wire” and acted alongside Williams in some of the show’s most memorable scenes, expressed his grief while praising Williams’ “ability to give voice to the human condition portraying the lives of those whose humanity is seldom elevated until he sings their truth…. The tributes from Williams’ colleagues have been effusive, describing him not only as an extraordinary artist but a rare human being. We were them and they were us.Īudiences grew to love the character of Omar and the actor who played him, as did his fellow actors. Instead of continuing the erasure of an integral part of the Black community, he made queer Black bodies visible, humanized and valorized. Bush years when anti-LGTBQ ideology held fierce sway in institutions of political power, Williams’s portrayal was a revolutionary cultural presence. On a show so universally acclaimed and at a time, during the George W. Williams' costars discuss the legacy he leaves behind Williams’s acting revealed Black queerness as intrinsic to all aspects of Black life, from the hood to the suburbs. Omar Little proved to be a significant portrayal of Black masculinity, especially in urban centers, one that pushed beyond boundaries of social acceptability for people who lived in racially segregated, economically impoverished communities. Guided by a moral code that disallowed hurting any “citizen” outside the “game” of seeking profit in the criminal underworld, Omar dispatched his own brand of justice against the Black criminal organizations the Barksdale Organization and Marlo Stanfield’s crew.īlack queerness for so much of television history has existed outside of conventional categories of beauty and power. With full knowledge of his homosexuality, the streets nonetheless feared and respected him. Omar’s queerness defied stereotypes and subverted toxic masculinity. (Note: HBO and CNN share the same parent company.) The nuance of Williams’s portrayal of the charismatic, unapologetically queer loner – one bold enough to rob drug dealers – was a constitutive part of what made the series great. Itand gave audiences a panoramic view of race, crime, punishment and politics in a major American city plagued by deindustrialization. His groundbreaking work as Omar shattered preconceived notions about Black sexuality and love, giving a richer depth to a show whose portrait of Baltimore unfolded with the care of an elegant novel. With the sheer force of his artistry Williams turned a recurring role into a major acting career– now cut tragically short. Peniel Joseph Kelvin Ma/Tufts University/Kelvin Ma/Tufts University
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