Viola Davis Just Bought the Former Plantation Where She Was Born to Celebrate Her 55th Birthday
Viola Davis is celebrating her 55th birthday in an incredibly powerful way.
The actor shared on Instagram that she now owns the Saint Matthews, South Carolina, property where she was born—a former plantation. "The above is the house where I was born August 11, 1965. It is the birthplace of my story. Today on my 55th year of life....I own it....all of it," she wrote in the caption. “'May you live long enough to know why you were born.' -Cherokee Birth Blessing” She also shared an image of the building itself on what was once the Singleton Plantation.
Davis has previously spoken about her time living there. “I wasn’t on it long, because I was the fifth child, and so we moved soon after I was born,” she told Jess Cagle in 2016. “I mean, I went back to visit briefly but still not aware of the history. I think I read one slave narrative of someone who was on that plantation which was horrific. One hundred and sixty acres of land, and my grandfather was a sharecropper. Most of my uncles and cousins, they’re farmers. That’s the choice that they had. My grandmother’s house was a one-room shack. I have a picture of it on my phone because I think it’s a beautiful picture.”
“[There was] no running water. No bathroom. It’s just an outhouse,” Davis continued. “But my mom says that the day I was born, all of my aunts and uncles were in the house. She said everyone was drinking and laughing and having fun. She said she ate a sardine, mustard, onion, tomato sandwich after I was born. I love that story. It’s a great story to me. It’s a great story of celebration in the midst of what you would feel is a decimated environment, but you could see the joy and the life that can come out of that, because it’s not always about things, you know.”
And now she owns it. All of it. What a flex. Happy birthday, Viola Davis!
Originally Appeared on Glamour
