When Emmy-award winning actress Viola Davis celebrated her 55th birthday with an Instagram post seemingly saying that she had bought the plantation house in which she was born, fans were overjoyed. Still, they may have celebrated a little too soon.
On Tuesday (Aug 11), Davis posted about the place where she was born, which included an uploaded photo of a now-dilapidated home in St. Matthews, South Carolina.
“The above is the house where I was born on Aug 11, 1965. It is the birthplace of my story. Today on my 55th year of life….I own it….all of it.”
After several websites and news outlets began releasing stories celebrating Davis’s purchase, the How To Get Away With Murder star quickly took to social media to set the record straight on the true nature of her post.
“Uhh….contrary to websites…I do not ‘own’ above house,” Davis wrote about the photo. “I ‘own’ my STORY!! Too abstract, I guess.”
In 2016 she talked to then editorial director of People and Entertainment Weekly magazines, Jess Cagle, about her brief time on her grandmother’s farm, which was a part of the Singleton Plantation in St. Matthews.
She stated that she “wasn’t on it long because I was the fifth child, and so we moved soon after I was born.”
“I mean, I went back to visit briefly but still not aware of the history,” she said. “I think I read one slave narrative of someone who was on that plantation, which was horrific. 160 acres of land, and my grandfather was a sharecropper.”
The celebrated black actress said that majority of her uncles and cousins were farmers as well because that was the only work offered to them.
The “bare-bones house” without any running water or indoor bathroom was meaningful to Davis, she stated, as she remembered how much love it held.
“My grandmother’s house was a one-room shack,” Davis said. “I have a picture of it on my phone because I think it’s a beautiful picture.”
And that is what she is owning. Davis finished her celebratory post by writing, “May you live long enough to know why you were born.”
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