Viola Davis celebrated her birthday by proudly taking ownership of her early life story. The Academy Award-winning actress, who turned 55 on Tuesday, shared a photo of her birthplace, which is located on a former plantation in South Carolina.
“The above is the house where I was born August 11, 1965. It is the birthplace of my story,” Davis posted on Instagram. “Today at my 55th birthday … I own it … all of it.”
She also shared a “Cherokee Birth Blessing” that read, “May you live long enough to know why you were born.”
Fans were quick to assume that Davis had purchased the property at Singleton Plantation in St. Louis. Matthews, South Carolina, but Davis made it clear later in the comments that this was not the case.
“Uhh … unlike websites … I ‘own’ not upstairs, I ‘own’ my STORY !! Too abstract I am silent,” she wrote in the comments.
Davis previously discussed the “horrific” history of the property where her grandfather was a sharecropper and opened up about her modest upbringing in a 2016 interview with Jess Cagle, the former editorial director of People and Entertainment Weekly.
“My grandmother’s house was a one-room loft. I have a picture of it on my phone because I think it’s a beautiful picture,” she said.
“I was not long with it because I was the fifth child, and so we moved shortly after I was born,” she told Cagle. “I mean, I went back to try briefly, but still not aware of the history. I think I read one slave story of someone who was terrible on that plantation. One hundred and sixty acres of land, and my grandfather was a sharecropper. Most of my uncles and aunts, they are farmers. That’s the choice they had. “
“My mother says that the day I was born, all my aunts and uncles were in the house, she said, everyone was drinking and laughing, and having fun,” she continued.
Davis described that she had no running water or bathroom, but insisted that despite the “decimated environment” she loved to hear the story of her birth because it was fun. “It’s not always about things, you know.”
.
