I worked with Bill Cosby and I saw his dark side

Filming with the disgraced comedian in the 1970s and 1980s, I witnessed his attitude towards women.

He makes us very proud. I was too young to see him on late-night TV during those early years, and my family didn’t buy comedy albums; but I heard them at the homes of black friends, where they were proudly displayed, at a time when the funny but vulgar comedians Redd Foxx and Moms Mabley were the only entertainment for adults and half-hidden blacks for children. Clear and relaxed, deft and refined, Bill Cosby, even more than our favorite Temptations, is what we call “ready.” That is, ready not only to assimilate but also ready to succeed in the white man’s world. Bill Cosby wasn’t ready: he killed it.

Fast forward a few years, and my suburban teenage world was rocked to its core by the barrier-breaking spy show I Spy. Inspired by Cosby’s character Scottie, I determined to join James Bond in finding a way out of the racially restrictive doldrums of Fairfield County, Connecticut. Television became less important during the college years dominated by black liberation wars, but Bill Cosby was very much there. Not just us, he broke through with the militant documentary, Black History: Lost, Stolen or Lost, which tore into the mainstream cultural exploitation of black people .