Celebrating Thurgood Marshall College's 40th Anniversary
 
 

James Avery

Famed Film and TV actor James Avery is perhaps best known as best known for his portrayal of Uncle Phil Banks-  patriarch and attorney (later judge) in Will Smith’s TV hit show The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.  Uncle Phil was ranked #34 in TV Guide’s “50t Greatest TV Dads of All Time.”   Mr. Avery is also well known for providing the voice of Shredder in the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles television show.  Several times in his career, Mr. Avery has played legal scholars and judges.    Coincidently, Mr. Avery portrayed law school dean Charles Hamilton Houston, the mentor of Thurgood Marshall, in Simple Justice (1994) – a PBS television movie about Marshall rising to the historic occasion of Brown v. Board of Education at the Supreme Court.

Mr. Avery was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey.  He entered the Navy after graduating high school and served in the Vietnam War for two years.  Upon leaving the military, Mr. Avery relocated to San Diego and focused on writing television scripts and poetry for PBS.  He received an Emmy Award for his Ameda Speaks: Poet James Avery at PBS and earned a scholarship to UC San Diego.  He studied Theatre and Literature and graduated in 1976.    Mr. Avery is an alumnus of Thurgood Marshall College and has been extremely generous to future generations of UC San Diego students. 

An imposing figure standing at 6'4", he has been celebrated as the primary host of Going Places, a popular travel and adventure series on PBS. He also guest starred in That ‘70s Show as Officer Kennedy. He guest-starred in the "Unfriendly Skies" episode of CSI as Preston Cash, a legally-blind witness to a murder who aids the CSI team with a brilliant verbal account of what he heard onboard the flight. Avery recently played a Los Angeles County Medical Examiner, Dr. Crippen, (who has recently appeared in a wheelchair), on the TNT series The Closer.   He played a charismatic entrepreneur on the Disney Channel’s That’s So Raven.   He also portrayed Jay’s reluctant professor in My Wife and Kids.    Mr. Avery was recently cast as the father in the new sitcom Sherri starring Sherri Shepherd.    
Mr. Avery's wife Barbara Avery, whom he married in 1988, is the Dean of Students at Occidental College in Los Angeles

The Internet Movie Database »
Wikipedia – James Avery »
History Makers »
Actor James Avery Speaks at UCSD - 2007 »

The prepared sixty minute text for The Thurgood Marshall Evening – an Actor’s Tribute comes from public speeches and interviews with Thurgood Marshall, edited by playwright Allan Havis who is the provost at Thurgood Marshall College.  Additional text created by Mr. Havis and improvised by James Avery.