Lawrence Hilton Jacobs
American actor
Lawrence Hilton Jacobs (born September 4, 1953), also credited as Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs and Lawrence Hilton-Jacques, is an American actor and singer. Best known for playing Freddie "Boom Boom" Washington in Welcome Back, Kotter (1975–1979), he has also appeared in a number of films and television shows, including Claudine (1974), Cooley High (1975), Roots (1977), Bangers and Mash (1983), Alien Nation (1989–1990), The Jacksons: An American Dream (1992), and 31 (2016).
Life and career
Jacobs was born in New York City, New York, the fifth of nine children of parents Hilton Jacobs (1920–2000) and Clothilda Jacobs (1922–2008). He began his acting career in the summer of 1969 and graduated from the High School of Art and Design in 1971. He attended Wilkes University for a short time before his acting career took off. Afterward, he studied acting with the Negro Ensemble Company and the Al Fann Theatrical Ensemble.
In 1975, he won the role of Freddie "Boom Boom" Washington on the ABC hit comedy series, Welcome Back, Kotter. Jacobs also starred in cult classic Cooley High in 1975 played as Richard "Cochise" Morris, and two years later had a role in the block-buster ABC mini-series Roots. Jacobs starred in a few commercials over the years, including an early 1970s commercial for The United Negro College Fund. Later in his career, he appeared in the 1989–1990 science fiction TV series Alien Nation as Sgt.
“Lawrence Hilton Jacobs” enters the record as american actor. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Lawrence, Hilton and Jacobs can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Lawrence Hilton Jacobs” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Lawrence, Hilton and Jacobs provides the most credible route into that argument.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3219901. VIAF identifies the subject as 88207077. The Library of Congress control number is no00057178. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1953, 1975, 1979 and 1974.
Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
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- Building a first chronology
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Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Lawrence Hilton Jacobs”, its source revision and the description used here.
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- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Lawrence Hilton Jacobs” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.