Chadwick Boseman died two years ago today (August 28) after a four-year fight with colon cancer. Boseman appeared in seven films while battling colon cancer and having numerous surgeries and chemotherapy.
He was born on November 29, 1976. Boseman began his career in theatre, where he received a Drama League Directing Fellowship, an acting AUDELCO, and a Jeff Award nomination for his 2005 play Deep Azure. In his first major role on the big screen, he was a series regular on the NBC drama Person Unknown (2010) before landing his breakout role as baseball great Jackie Robinson in the 2013 biographical picture 42. He continued to play historical personalities, appearing in Get on Up (2014) as musician James Brown and Marshall as attorney Thurgood Marshall (2017).
Outside of performance, Boseman donated to a number of organizations. He collaborated with cancer charities such as St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and he continued to assist people fighting the disease until his death from it; in a message to the producer days before his death, Boseman requested about delivering gifts to childhood cancer sufferers. He gave $10,000 to the Boys and Girls Club of Harlem to provide complimentary tickets to Black Panther for children.
On August 29, 2020, the day after Boseman died, the tweet on his Twitter account in which his family announced his death became the most-liked tweet in history, with over six million likes in less than 24 hours and accumulating over seven million by August 31, far surpassing the previous record holder. His death was compared to the untimely deaths of several young black celebrities in 2020, most notably Kobe Bryant and Naya Rivera. The Associated Press and Clarn named Rivera and Boseman as two of Hollywood’s most significant deaths in 2020.
