He grew up in rural Surry County as the youngest of 12 children to a father who paid the bills with a 34-year career processing hog meat at the Smithfield plant.<\/p>\n
Unlike his father, Antonio Charity chose a career that many considered unpragmatic: He became an actor.<\/p>\n
As a young man, he left Virginia in search of big city stages. And like his father, he never gave up.<\/p>\n
Thirty years later, Charity, 53, left Los Angeles in March and returned home with over 100 combined film and TV credits<\/a>. Surry County is now the place he\u2019s teaching a new generation of actors \u2014 and the setting for his forthcoming documentary.<\/p>\n Charity used his extensive industry experience and Hollywood connections to make \u201cWhere Charity Began\u201d<\/a> to explore his family\u2019s 400-year history<\/a> in Virginia.<\/p>\n He can\u2019t remember a time when he didn\u2019t want to be an actor. Forever called to the limelight, he\u2019d stand on kitchen countertops as a toddler singing along to the radio. Older siblings still laugh about his renditions of Kool & The Gang\u2019s \u201cHollywood Swing.\u201d After graduating from Surry High School in 1990, he enrolled at Howard University as a theater major.<\/p>\n Senior year, he landed his first TV role, playing Kid Funkadelic on the NBC series \u201cHomicide: Life on the Street\u201d in an episode that guest-starred Robin Williams. For several years, he\u2019d cling to that memory when times felt tough and parts were few. He\u2019d worked alongside a star, he\u2019d remind himself. He could do it again.<\/p>\n After college, he moved home and got a job at the meatpacking plant.<\/p>\n \u201cMy daddy did it for 34 years. I figured I could do it for one year. I couldn\u2019t,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He moved to New York City at 23 and performed in off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway stage shows for the next nine years while booking TV parts, including roles on episodes of \u201cLaw & Order: Special Victims Unit,\u201d a made-for-television film called \u201cSomething the Lord Made\u201d starring Alan Rickman and rapper Mos Def, and the 2005 feature film \u201cThe Salon\u201d starring Vivica A. Fox.<\/p>\n It was his recurring role as a corrections officer on the HBO series \u201cThe Wire\u201d that boosted his confidence to move to Los Angeles. He\u2019s not a celebrity, but with his dozens of appearances on TV and in indie and feature films, Charity has long maintained his status as a professional working actor. He never seriously considered making his own film until three years ago.<\/p>\n He was living in LA with his wife, Tige<\/a>, and their daughter, Ebony Jewel, who was 10 the night she first heard the Charity family story that has been passed down from one generation to the next.<\/p>\n \u201cRumor has it that we were never enslaved,\u201d the father told his daughter.<\/p>\n Despite the Black family\u2019s having lived in the South and in Surry County for hundreds of years, he explained to his daughter, no one in their family with the surname Charity was ever a slave.<\/p>\n The dad recalled that his little girl, who listened to his words with wide eyes and peak attention, sat for several moments in silence before replying: \u201cWhy isn\u2019t this known?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s what she asked me,\u201d he said. \u201cAs in, she wanted to know why it was a lot of people were unaware of it. Why isn\u2019t it widely known that we Charitys were never slaves?\u201d<\/p>\n She had a point, he thought. People should know.<\/p>\n Prompted to make the documentary, Charity started digging into documents and researching his family\u2019s American history that dates back to 1619. The Charitys, he discovered, are direct descendants of at least two of the first enslaved Africans in the English colony of Virginia. Their descendants were forced to toil on Tidewater plantations.<\/p>\n