DUANE
Duane's take
The way I tell it, I'm drawing straight from the official marker — so here's the story Texas saw fit to put in stone about Rex Ingram. Now, Corsicana, Texas has given the world plenty of things worth talking about, but few quite like this. Rex Clifford Ingram was born right here in Navarro County, son of Mack and Mamie Ingram, and somewhere along the way it became clear that this particular man was headed somewhere extraordinary.
He made his way to Northwestern University, earned that degree, and then — well, then he went and built himself a career that would last fifty years. Fifty. That's not a stint, that's not a run of good luck, that's a life's work laid down brick by brick across half a century of American entertainment.
He made his screen debut in a 1918 Tarzan film, back in the era of silent movies, when the whole craft of acting for the camera was still being invented in real time. Rex Ingram was there at the beginning of it, learning the language of the lens. But if you want the moment that sealed his legacy — and the marker is clear on this — it was 1936.
The film was Green Pastures, and the role was De Lawd. He won widespread acclaim for that portrayal. Widespread.
The kind of recognition that travels past the theater doors and out into the culture itself. And he didn't stop there. Broadway.
Television productions. Stage and screen and the glowing box in America's living rooms. The marker says he brought his skill and dignity to every performance, and that phrase — skill and dignity — that's not thrown in casually.
That's a man's entire reputation distilled into two words. The official marker calls him the Dean of American black actors. Not a pioneer, not a notable figure — the Dean.
That's the title history settled on for a man from Corsicana, Texas. He died and was buried in California, far from Navarro County. But the marker is here.
The story is here. And that title — Dean of American black actors — that one belongs to Rex Ingram forever.
What the marker says
Dean of American black actors. A Corsicana native, Rex (Clifford) Ingram was the son of Mack and Mamie Ingram. He graduated from Northwestern University before launching his brilliant acting career, which spanned 50 years. Ingram made his screen debut during the era of silent movies in a 1918 "Tarzan" film. He won widespread acclaim for his famous portrayal of "De Lawd" in the 1936 film "Green Pastures." Ingram also appeared on the Broadway stage and in several television productions, bringing his skill and dignity to every performance. He died and was buried in California. (1976)