Ruby Dee
Ruby Dee (October 27, 1922 – June 11, 2014) was an American actress, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist, and civil rights activist.[1] Dee was married to Ossie Davis, with whom she frequently performed until his death in 2005.[2] She received numerous accolades including two Emmy Awards, a Grammy Award, a Obie Award and a Drama Desk Award as well as nominations for an Academy Award. She was honored with the National Medal of Arts in 1995, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2000, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2004.
Ruby Dee
June 11, 2014 (aged 91)
Hunter College (1945)
- Actress
- poet
- playwright
- screenwriter
- journalist
- activist
1940–2013
3, including Guy Davis
Dee started her career with the American Negro Theatre. She made her Broadway debut in South Pacific (1943). She met her future husband working together on the play Jeb (1946). She originated the Broadway roles of Ruth Younger in Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun (1959) and reprised the role in the 1961 film and Lutiebell Gussie Mae Jenkins in the Ossie Davis play Purlie Victorious (1961) and reprised the role in the 1963 film.
She made her film debut in That Man of Mine (1946) before landing a leading roles in films such as The Jackie Robinson Story (1950), Edge of the City (1957), Take a Giant Step (1959), and Buck and the Preacher (1972). She also acted in the Ossie Davis film Black Girl (1972), and the Spike Lee films Do the Right Thing (1989) and Jungle Fever (1991). For her performance in American Gangster (2007), Dee was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Female Actor in a Supporting Role.
Dee received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations for her roles in The Doctors and the Nurses (1964) and Decoration Day (1990). She was Emmy-nominated for her roles in Roots: The Next Generations (1979), Lincoln (1988), China Beach (1990), and Evening Shade (1993). She also acted in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1979), Long Day's Journey into Night (1982), Go Tell It on the Mountain (1985), The Court-Martial of Jackie Robinson (1990), The Stand (1994). She voiced Alice the Great in the Nickelodeon series Little Bill from 1994 to 2004.
Early life and education[edit]
Dee was born on October 27, 1922, in Cleveland, Ohio,[3] the daughter of Gladys (née Hightower) and Marshall Edward Nathaniel Wallace, a cook, waiter and porter.[4] After her mother left the family, Dee's father remarried, to Emma Amelia Benson, a schoolteacher.[5][6][7]
Dee was raised in Harlem, New York.[8] Prior to attending Hunter College High School, she studied at Public Schools 119 and 136.[9] Then, she went on to graduate from Hunter College with a degree in Romance languages in 1945.[10] She was a member of Delta Sigma Theta.[11]
Personal life[edit]
Marriage[edit]
Ruby Wallace married blues singer Frankie Dee Brown in 1941, and began using his middle name as her stage name. The couple divorced in 1945.[10] Three years later she married actor Ossie Davis, whom she met while costarring in Robert Ardrey's 1946 Broadway play Jeb.[22] Together, Dee and Davis wrote an autobiography in which they discussed their political activism and their decision to have an open marriage (later changing their views).[23][24] Together they had three children: son, blues musician Guy Davis, and two daughters, Nora Day and Hasna Muhammad. Dee was a breast cancer survivor of more than three decades.[25] In 1979, the Supersisters trading card set was produced and distributed; one of the cards featured Dee's name and picture.[26]
Political activism[edit]
Dee and Davis were well-known civil rights activists in the Civil Rights Movement.[27] Dee was a member of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the NAACP, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Delta Sigma Theta sorority, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She was also as an active member of the Harlem Writers Guild for over 40 years. In 1963, Dee emceed the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.[28] Dee and Davis were both personal friends of both Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, with Davis giving the eulogy at Malcolm X's funeral in 1965.[29] In 1970, she won the Frederick Douglass Award from the New York Urban League.[8] In 1999, Dee and Davis were arrested at 1 Police Plaza, the headquarters of the New York Police Department, protesting the police shooting of Amadou Diallo.[30]
In early 2003, The Nation published "Not in Our Name", an open proclamation vowing opposition to the impending US invasion of Iraq. Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis were among the signatories, along with Robert Altman, Noam Chomsky, Susan Sarandon, and Howard Zinn, among others. In November 2005, Dee was awarded – along with her late husband – the Lifetime Achievement Freedom Award, presented by the National Civil Rights Museum located in Memphis. Dee, a long-time resident of New Rochelle, New York, was inducted into the New Rochelle Walk of Fame which honors the most notable residents from throughout the community's 325-year history. She was also inducted into the Westchester County Women's Hall of Fame on March 30, 2007, joining such other honorees as Hillary Clinton and Nita Lowey.[31] In 2009, she received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Princeton University.[16][32]
Death[edit]
Dee died on June 11, 2014, at her home in New Rochelle, New York, from natural causes at the age of 91.[33] In a statement, Gil Robertson IV of the African-American Film Critics Association said, "the members of the African American Film Critics Association are deeply saddened at the loss of actress and humanitarian Ruby Dee. Throughout her seven-decade career, Dee embraced different creative platforms with her various interpretations of black womanhood and also used her gifts to champion for Human Rights."[8]
"She very peacefully surrendered", said her daughter Nora Day. "We hugged her, we kissed her, we gave her our permission to go. She opened her eyes. She looked at us. She closed her eyes, and she set sail." Following her death, the marquee on the Apollo Theater read: "A TRUE APOLLO LEGEND RUBY DEE 1922–2014".[34]
Dee was cremated, and her ashes are held in the same urn as that of Davis, with the inscription "In this thing together".[10] A public memorial celebration honoring Dee was held on September 20, 2014, at the Riverside Church in Upper Manhattan.[35] Their shared urn was buried at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.[36]