Leo G. Carroll

Cosby became the center of controversy in May 2004 when he made public remarks critical of low-income African Americans whom he believed to be deprioritizing education in favor of sports and fashion. Cosby received Kennedy Center Honors in 1998 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002. On March 12, 1997 Mikail Markhasev was arrested in Los Angeles and charged with the attempted robbery and shooting of Ennis. Their only son Ennis Cosby, aged 27, was murdered on January 16, 1997, while changing a flat tire in Los Angeles, California.

He is married to Camille Hanks and they have four daughters. He is now a leading educational philanthropist. The Cosby Show also served as a vehicle to raise issues of drugs, illiteracy, teen pregnancy, and gang violence. Notably, he structured the 80's Cosby family to represent children at all ages, and the addition of Sandra as a Princeton-educated lawyer is meant to show how good parenting and education of children leads to success.

He has attempted to integrate education with television in some projects, such as Picture Pages, where Cosby taught children how to draw in a series of shorts aired by PBS. Cosby earned a doctorate in education from the University of Massachusetts in 1977: his thesis concerned the use of the Fat Albert series as a teaching aid. A colorful work of Cosby was his portrayal as a bigot in Bill Cosby on Prejudice (1971). Despite his success in other media, Cosby's film acting career has been characterized by mediocre projects such as Leonard Part 6 (1987) and Ghost Dad (1990), although he did star in a series of successful comedy films with Sidney Poitier in the mid-1970s such as Let's Do it Again.

In fact, Fatherhood and Time Flies were the best selling non-fiction hardback books of 1986 and 1987, respectively. He has also written several humorous books about different aspects of life, based on his stand-up comedy such as Fatherhood and Love and Marriage. He won several Grammy awards for comedy albums, had a top forty song ("Little Old Man") in 1969, and sang on a number of albums. Bill Cosby was a regular on the Captain Kangaroo show in the 1980s, presenting the "Picture Pages" segment which was later syndicated on its own.

He has producer, writer, director and even composer credits on many of his projects. Cosby then appeared in a series of shows named after himself: The Bill Cosby Show, The New Bill Cosby Show, the animated Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, Cos, The Cosby Show, The Cosby Mysteries, and Cosby (based upon the British series One Foot In The Grave). Cosby won two Emmy Awards for his portrayal of an undercover CIA agent; it was also the first time an African-American actor starred in a weekly dramatic television series. After working as a bartender for several years, he began his career as a stand-up comic, and was discovered by Sheldon Leonard, who landed Cosby a break-out television role in I Spy (1965).

Later, he won an athletic scholarship to Temple University. He joined the United States Navy in tenth grade and completed high school through correspondence courses. Cosby was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At one time, he was one of the most highly paid entertainers in the United States.