William Henry Cosby Jr. was born on July 12, 1937, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is one of four sons of Anna Pearl (née Hite), a maid, and William Henry Cosby Sr., who served as a mess steward in the U.S. Navy.

Cosby was the class president as well as captain of both the baseball and track-and-field teams at Mary Channing Wister Public School in Philadelphia. Teachers noted his propensity for joking around instead of studying, and he described himself as the class clown. Cosby attended Philadelphia's Central High School, a magnet school and academically rigorous college prep school, where he ran track and played baseball, football, and basketball. He transferred to Germantown High School but failed the tenth grade.

In 1956, Cosby enlisted in the Navy and served as a hospital corpsman at the Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia; at Naval Station Argentia in Newfoundland, Canada; and at the National Naval Medical Center in Maryland. He worked in physical therapy with Navy and Marine Corps personnel who were injured during the Korean War. He served until 1960 and became a petty officer 3rd class.

Cosby earned his high school equivalency diploma through correspondence courses and was awarded a track-and-field scholarship to Temple University in 1961. At Temple, he studied physical education while he ran track and played fullback on the college's football team. Cosby began bartending at a Philadelphia club, where he earned bigger tips by making the customers laugh. He then began performing on stage and left his university studies to pursue a career in comedy.

Cosby resumed his formal education in 1971. Temple University granted him his bachelor's degree on the basis of what it referred to as life experience. He then began graduate work at UMass Amherst, receiving his Master of Arts (MA) degree in 1972.

He returned to UMass Amherst, and in 1976, while producing Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, he earned his Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) degree. His dissertation was titled An Integration of the Visual Media Via 'Fat Albert And The Cosby Kids' into the Elementary School Curriculum as a Teaching Aid and Vehicle to Achieve Increased Learning.

The earliest allegation against Cosby dates back to December 1965: in 2005, Kristina Ruehli came forward as Jane Doe #12 in the Andrea Constand case and alleged that Cosby had drugged and assaulted her at that time in his Beverly Hills home. Further, Ruehli said she had told her boyfriend about the incident, and had told her daughter in the 1980s.

In the early 1980s, Joan Tarshis told freelance reporter John Milward about an alleged sexual assault by Cosby. Milward did not write about the allegations. In 1996, Playboy Playmate Victoria Valentino gave a videotaped interview in which she made sexual assault allegations against Cosby. The interview was conducted for an exposé on the lives of Playboy models, which was never published.

After the allegations resurfaced in 2014, Wendy Williams recalled that during her radio show in 1990, she referred to sexual assault allegations against Cosby that had been published in the National Enquirer tabloid. Williams said Cosby called her boss in the middle of the broadcast demanding that Williams be fired.
On February 1, 2000, according to a statement provided by Detective Jose McCallion of the New York County District Attorney's Special Victims Bureau, Lachele Covington, who was 20 years old at the time, filed a criminal complaint against Cosby alleging that on January 28, 2000, at his Manhattan townhouse, he had tried to put her hands down his pants and then exposed himself. Covington also alleged that Cosby grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hands down her pants. Cosby was questioned and insisted "it was not true". The New York City Police Department (NYPD) referred her complaint to the D.A., but they declined to prosecute.

In January 2004, Andrea Constand, a former Temple University employee, accused Cosby of drugging and fondling her; however, in February 2005, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania's District Attorney said there would be no charges due to insufficient credible and admissible evidence. Constand then filed a civil claim in March 2005, with thirteen women as potential witnesses if the case went to court. Cosby settled out of court for an undisclosed amount in November 2006. After learning that charges were not pursued in the Constand case, California lawyer Tamara Lucier Green, the only publicly named woman in the prior case, came forward with allegations in February 2005 that Cosby had drugged and assaulted her in the 1970s. Cosby's lawyer said Cosby did not know her and that the events did not happen.

In a July 2005 Philadelphia Daily News interview, Beth Ferrier, one of the anonymous "Jane Doe" witnesses in the Constan…

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Before the 2014 allegations, younger, well-established comics like Jerry Seinfeld had credited Cosby as an innovator both as a practitioner of stand-up comedy, as well as a person who paved the way for comics to break into sitcom television.

Seinfeld said of Cosby: "He opened a door for all of us, for all of the networks to even consider that this was a way to create a character, was to take someone who can hold an audience just by being up there and telling their story. He created that. He created the whole idea of taking a quote-unquote 'comic' and developing a TV show just from a persona that you see on stage."

Comedian Larry Wilmore also saw a connection between Bill Cosby: Himself and the later success of The Cosby Show, saying: "It's clear that the concert is the template for The Cosby Show."
Joan Tarshis, who had accused Cosby of raping her, within a Salon.com article, compared Cosby's damaged legacy to that of O. J. Simpson, saying: "When you hear O. J. Simpson's name, you don't think 'Oh, great football player'. That doesn't come to mind first. I'm thinking it's not going to be 'Oh, great comedian'. It's going to be 'Oh, serial rapist'."

In 2015, Ebony magazine released an issue with the allegations against Cosby as the cover story, discussing the importance of The Cosby Show and if it is possible to separate Bill Cosby from Cliff Huxtable. The cover depicted a photograph of the Huxtables with a cracked frame, symbolizing the show's damaged and complicated legacy.

In late 2018, the Christmas song "Baby, It's Cold Outside" was pulled from several radio stations amid controversy that its lyrics allegedly promote sexual predation. Susan Loesser, daughter of composer Frank Loesser, blamed Bill Cosby for backlash against its lyric "say, what's in this drink?". Loesser said, "Bill Cosby is ruining it for everybody ...Ever since Cosby was accused of drugging women, I hear the date rape thing all the time ...I think it would be good if people looked at the song in the context of the time. It was written in 1944. It was a different time."

The 2022 premiere of the 21st season of Law & Order touched on the Cosby cases, with the plot being centered around the murder of an entertainer (in this case a singer) released from prison after his conviction was overturned in a manner resembling Cosby's. Like Cosby, he had been accused of many counts of rape yet maintained his innocence but was shot and killed by a victim looking for revenge.

In 2022, W. Kamau Bell released the Showtime documentary We Need to Talk About Cosby, which explores Cosby's life and career up to his sexual assault cases, through conversations with comedians, journalists, and survivors. A representative for Cosby issued a statement days prior to the series's premiere, stating: "Mr. Cosby has spent more than 50 years standing with the excluded; made it possible for some to be included; standing with the disenfranchised; and standing with those women and men who were denied respectful work because of race and gender within the expanses of the entertainment industri…

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