Phylicia Rashad: the Art of Looking Within

Phylicia Rashad

Picture a nine-year-old girl standing in a segregated Houston supermarket in the 1950s, staring at two water fountains. One labeled "For Colored." The other: "For Whites Only."

Curiosity got the best of young Phylicia Allen. She wanted to know what that forbidden water tasted like. So she walked over, turned on the whites-only fountain, and drank.

The water tasted exactly the same.

"I understood that humanity had tricked itself," she would later reflect. "And I was just over it. I said, 'I'm done. This is dumb, I'm done.'"

At age nine, through direct experimentation, Phylicia Rashad discovered what would become the foundation of her life philosophy: external labels and restrictions have no inherent truth. The differences were constructed, not real.

That moment of clarity—that flash of understanding that the entire system of oppression was built on a demonstrable lie—freed her internally in a way that would shape everything to come.

The Mother Who Planted Seeds

Behind that nine-year-old's fearless curiosity was Vivian Ayers Allen, a poet and visionary who was determined that her children would not be scarred by racism.

Vivian's strategy was both brilliant and subversive. When segregation prevented her children from going somewhere they wanted to go, she didn't explain it as racism. She'd simply say: "Well, we can't go there because it's a private club and we're not members of that club."

Then she'd do something else; something better.

She'd gather all the neighborhood children and teach them choral speech. She'd move the living room furniture aside and teach them to tumble. She'd teach them Katherine Dunham dance combinations across the floor, or piano, or organ.

"When you're engaged in creative activity," Phylicia explains, "it's you and creativity. It's you and the art. It's you and whatever that is that's really giving you access to your own self."

Vivian gave her children aphorisms to memorize: phrases they couldn't possibly understand as children, but which planted seeds that would bloom decades later:

"The universe bears no ill to me. I bear no ill to it."

"The inner reality creates the outer form."

"Be true. Be beautiful. Be free."

At age thirteen, Vivian packed up everything the family owned, put it in storage, bought Greyhound bus tickets, and took her children to live in Mexico City for a semester. They didn't speak Spanish. They didn't know anyone.

"It was a turning point in life for me," Phylicia recalls, "because now I was in a place, in a world in which my being was not defined externally by restrictive laws. I was living in an international city and the world got very, very big and I was part of it."

The Teacher Who Tended Petals

At Jack Yates High School in Houston, fifteen-year-old Phylicia Allen walked into Mrs. Edwin Whedon's English class and met another force of nature.

"Being a student with a great teacher is like being a flower," Phylicia reflects. "You don't see your petals opening—they just do. Because a good teacher tends that plant. A good teacher watches and learns how you learn and is really interested in seeing that light go on."

Mrs. Whedon commanded authority not through fear but through knowledge. She asked small, precise questions that revealed whether you'd actually done the reading—not just skimmed Cliff Notes. "What was someone holding when this happened? What did this person treasure?"

She made students write, rewrite, and revise. But the revision wasn't about correcting spelling: it was about reshaping thought. "Think that phrase through," she would say.

Mrs. Whedon integrated all literature seamlessly: Shakespeare and Milton alongside Langston Hughes and contemporary newspapers. "It didn't seem like the classics were over here and Langston Hughes was over there," Phylicia remembers. "It was all together. It was literature."

The combination of Vivian's visionary freedom and Mrs. Whedon's rigorous discipline created something remarkable: a young woman who knew how to look within for truth while maintaining the highest external standards of excellence.

The Central Question

Years later, when asked how to address people who feel unseen, unheard, and forgotten, Phylicia's answer cuts through to the essential:

"See yourself. See who you really are. See what's living inside you. And you won't worry about anybody else seeing you."

This isn't motivational speaking. It's hard-won wisdom from someone who spent decades wrestling with feeling "not enough" despite extraordinary accomplishment.

"As a young girl growing up, you go through a period where you feel like you're not enough because you're looking outside yourself," she admits. "You compare yourself to everyone else you see and you're not enough because you don't dress like that one or you don't have hair like that one."

Her own mother was beautiful. Her father was handsome. Her sister Debbie was cute. "I just thought when I was born the Lord was doing something else."

It took until age 34—after The Cosby Show had made her famous—before she finally looked inside herself and discovered she was enough. Had always been enough.

"Now I look back at those pictures of myself and I say, 'why'd you feel like that?'" she laughs. "That's why it's important to teach young people to look inside. The mind—oh yeah, the mind."

The Practice: Introspection as Foundation

So how did she find herself?

"Through the practice of introspection," she explains. "Of really taking time to be with myself. To really be with me. Just a little bit of time every single day. Just a little bit of time. And you understand that you are a wondrous creation."

This isn't passive meditation. It's active engagement with fundamental questions:

Who am I—really?

Where do I come from?

Why am I here?

What am I doing?

"Beyond ethnicity, beyond nationality, beyond gender, certainly beyond social and economic status. Who am I? People see you in one light or another, depending on the way they think and the way they see. It has nothing to do with the truth of who you really are."

From Inner Work to Outer Form

That phrase from her mother—"the inner reality creates the outer form"—became her methodology for everything.

In acting: She doesn't decide how to say a line. She goes to the word itself. "Language is so beautiful and it is fluid and it is tonal, it's expressive, it's internal. It's fire, it's water, it's air. The words themselves inform how I say it."

When preparing for Lena Younger in A Raisin in the Sun, she didn't just study the text. She thought about Mama Goldie's kitchen: the smell of the wood-burning stove, walking to the pump with a bucket for water, heating water in a kettle for baths in a washtub. She paid homage to the women who nurtured her parents.

In directing: She creates what she calls "collective intention"— everyone holding the same vision together. "That's the direction I like to give," she says. Not imposing from above but creating conditions for ensemble work to flourish.

In teaching: "When I assume the role of teacher, it feels like I learn more than I teach. And that's very stimulating for me." She watches for that flash of intuition in students' eyes: the moment the light goes on.

In service: Through decades of work with PRASAD, she's learned that "when something is given or shared with a human being with respect—that lets them know this is being offered because you are worthy—and it's received in this way, that's like turning on a light."

The Love Story Hidden in the Work

If you study Phylicia Rashad's career closely, you'll notice something: she keeps returning to love.

When director Kenny Leon pointed out that A Raisin in the Sun contains three love stories —Lena and Big Walter, Ruth and Walter Lee, Beneatha and Asagai — it transformed her understanding.

"If you don't look at the love, you're going to miss the whole point of everything," she emphasizes.

This applies to all of life: "It is love that has brought us through. It is not anger. It is not rancor. It's not a bald-up fist punching at the air. It's love that has brought us through and that will see us through even this time."

Love for Lena Younger meant letting her son fail and then betting on his spirit anyway. Love for Ma Ponk in Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored meant staying behind to nurture family when others left for better opportunities. Love for Elizabeth in The Old Settler meant risking heartbreak after years of protecting herself.

"Life is never just one way or the other," she explains. "Life is spherical. Human emotions are really quite complex. And it's much more interesting to explore that than to determine one single thing and play that to the hilt. That means absolutely nothing to me. That's not who a human being is."

The Circle That Never Ends

Someone inspired Mrs. Whedon to become a teacher.

Mrs. Whedon taught Phylicia Allen discipline, rigor, and love of language.

Vivian Ayers Allen taught her daughters to look within, access creativity, and dream without limits.

Phylicia became Phylicia Rashad and taught Chadwick Boseman at Howard University.

Chadwick wrote plays and created art until his death too soon.

Phylicia preserves his legacy through readings of his work.

Kenny Leon created the August Wilson Monologue Competition, now in 13 states.

Debbie Allen runs a dance academy and teaches at the restored Brainerd Institute.

The site where their mother learned now teaches children aged 3 to 80.

"The circle goes on," as one of Mrs. Whedon's former students wrote to her. "I would imagine it started long before you and there was someone who inspired you to go into teaching. Then because of your dedication... I'm not the only one you inspired. And the circle goes on."

The Ultimate Teaching

Near the end of one interview, an audience member asks: "In the context of the black American narrative, what level of influence do you use to reshape the narrative that has been largely told by the majority?"

Phylicia's response cuts to the bone:

"My question is: Do you need a play to know who you are?

Do you need somebody to sing a song for you to know who you are?

Do you need something external to know who you are?

"And if that is so, how could you ever tell a truthful narrative if you're always looking outside of yourself for answers? How could you ever deliver a truthful narrative?"

This is the water fountain wisdom grown into life philosophy.

This is what her mother taught by taking them to Mexico City.

This is what Mrs. Whedon taught through rigorous self-examination.

This is what the Negro Ensemble Company showed her that transformative summer—excellence is real, and you can be part of it.

You cannot tell authentic stories about who you are if you don't first know who you are from the inside.

The Invitation

Somewhere right now, a young person is standing in front of their own water fountain moment, testing whether the external restrictions they've been told about are real or constructed.

Somewhere, a teacher is watching for that flash of intuition in a student's eyes.

Somewhere, someone is serving with profound respect, turning on lights in others.

Somewhere, an artist is bringing their full self to their work, refusing to diminish to fit in.

The circle goes on.

Phylicia Rashad's legacy isn't just her performances, though they're magnificent. It isn't just her teaching, though it's transformative. It isn't just her service, though it's profound.

Her legacy is the demonstration that when you know who you really are—beyond ethnicity, beyond nationality, beyond gender, beyond status—you become free to be excellent.

And excellence, combined with love, changes everything.

"The inner reality creates the outer form."

The water tasted the same.

See yourself.

The circle goes on.

Forever.

As always, stay curious, stay open-minded, and look within first.

Until next time,

Tricky Sol