Los Angeles TimesLOS ANGELES - Otis Young, the first black actor to co-star in a TV western series - The Outcasts in the late 1960s - has died at age 69. Mr. Young, who became an ordained minister and a community-college professor, died Oct. 12 of a stroke in Los Angeles.
The actor's best-known movie role was as a career sailor transporting a prisoner to the brig with Jack Nicholson's character in the 1973 movie The Last Detail. But he was a relative unknown when he landed the role in The Outcasts, an hour-long western that ran on ABC in 1968-69. It co-starred Don Murray as an ex-Confederate officer and former slave owner who had lost everything and who teamed up with Mr. Young's character, Jemal David, an ex-slave who became a bounty hunter.
Produced during a time of racial unrest, The Outcasts depicted a situation in which blacks and whites could live together - but with an underlying and not-always-hidden hostility.
Mr. Young was the only unknown among a number of well-known actors who did screen tests with Murray for the part.
"He just stood out . . . because he was the one actor who was totally unapologetic about this hostility" between the two characters, Murray recalled.
Born in Providence, R.I., a Fourth of July baby, Mr. Young was one of 14 children. He joined the Marines at 17, and after serving in the Korean War enrolled in acting classes at New York University. He then appeared in numerous theater productions in New York and Los Angeles.
A born-again Christian, Mr. Young earned a bachelor's degree from L.I.F.E. Bible College in Los Angeles in 1983. Later, he served as a senior pastor in Rochester, N.Y.
In 1992, he received a master's degree in communications from the State University of New York. From 1989 until his retirement in 1999, he taught theater, speech and communications at Monroe Community College in Rochester, where he also directed student productions.
He is survived by his wife, Barbara; sons El Mahdi and Jemal Lucien, both of Los Angeles; daughters Lovelady Young of Philadelphia and Saudia Young of Manhattan; and his mother, Gwendolyn Tunewald of Philadelphia.
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