Avery Franklin Brooks (born October 2, 1948) is an American actor, jazz musician, opera singer and college professor. Brooks is perhaps best known for his television roles as Benjamin Sisko on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Hawk on Spenser: For Hire and its spinoff A Man Called Hawk, and his film role in American History X.
Brooks was born in Evansville, Indiana, the son of Eva Lydia (née Crawford), a chorale conductor and music instructor, and Samu...
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Avery Franklin Brooks (born October 2, 1948) is an American actor, jazz musician, opera singer and college professor. Brooks is perhaps best known for his television roles as Benjamin Sisko on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Hawk on Spenser: For Hire and its spinoff A Man Called Hawk, and his film role in American History X.
Brooks was born in Evansville, Indiana, the son of Eva Lydia (née Crawford), a chorale conductor and music instructor, and Samuel Brooks, a union official, tool and die worker, and singer. His maternal grandfather, Samuel Travis Crawford, was also a singer. At age eight, his family later moved to Gary, Indiana when Samuel Brooks was laid off from International Harvester. Of Gary, Brooks has said "I was born in Evansville ... but it was Gary, Indiana, that made me".
The Brooks household was filled with music. His mother, who was among the first African-American women to earn a master's degree in music at Northwestern University, taught music wherever the family lived....
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