On this day in 1991 Comedian John Elroy Sanford a.k.a Redd Foxx, died of a heart attack 🕊
Did you know that he and Malcolm X were best friends and worked together as dishwashers at the same restaurant in Harlem in the 1940s. The staff called Foxx “Chicago Red” and Malcolm “Detroit Red”.
—Remembering Redd Foxx (Dec 9, 1922 – Oct 11, 1991)—
He portrayed Fred G. Sanford on the television show Sanford and Son and starred in The Redd Foxx Show and The Royal Family. His film projects included All the Fine Young Cannibals (1960), Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970), Norman... Is That You? (1976) and Harlem Nights (1989).
Red Foxx was birth named John Elroy Sanford in St. Louis, Missouri and raised in Chicago's South Side.
His father, Fred Sanford, an electrician and auto mechanic from Hickman, Kentucky, left the family when Foxx was four years old. He was raised by his half-Seminole mother, Mary Hughes, from Ellisville, Mississippi, his grandmother and his minister.
Foxx attended DuSable High School in Chicago's Bronzeville neighborhood with future Chicago mayor Harold Washington. Foxx had an older brother, Fred Jr., who provided the name for his character on Sanford and Son.
In the 1940s, he met Malcolm Little, later known as Malcolm X. In Malcolm's autobiography, Foxx is referred to as "Chicago Red, the funniest dishwasher on this earth." He earned the nickname because of his reddish hair and complexion.
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