Born on August 11, 1965, in South Carolina; her family moved to Central Falls, Rhode Island when she was quite young, a town which at the time Davis experienced as a "rough, all-white community where the racism was naked as a newborn piglet." Her involvements in Upward Bound and Student Support Services were important steps in her academic and social development.
Davis majored in theatre at Rhode Island College, graduating in 1988; in 2002 she received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from the college. She also attended The Juilliard School for four years, characterizing the experience as a "mixed blessing":
I'm happy that I went there. The school does what it says it wants to do, which is to stretch you as an actor, make you break old habits, expand you and make you more versatile. The problem is that it doesn't celebrate the individual. It stifles everything about you that makes you uniquely you.
Davis has been married to actor Julius Tennon since 2003. They have two children.
Comments