Ruby Dee
Ruby Dee was an influential American actress, poet, playwright, and civil rights activist, born Ruby Ann Wallace on October 27, 1922, in Cleveland, Ohio. She grew up in Harlem, New York, where her stepmother fostered her artistic talents and creative pursuits. Dee began her acting career with the American Negro Theater, where she gained recognition for her roles that addressed African American life and struggles. She married fellow actor Ossie Davis, and together they became prominent figures in both the entertainment industry and the civil rights movement.
Dee's career spanned over seven decades, during which she appeared in notable works such as "A Raisin in the Sun" and "American Gangster," earning numerous accolades, including an Oscar nomination at age 83. Alongside her cinematic achievements, she was deeply committed to social justice, participating in significant civil rights events and advocating for equality. In addition to her acting, she wrote and produced, contributing to the representation of African Americans in media. Ruby Dee passed away on June 11, 2014, leaving behind a legacy of artistic excellence and activism that continues to inspire.
Ruby Dee
Actor, writer, and activist
- Born: October 27, 1924
- Birthplace: Cleveland, Ohio
- Died: June 11, 2014
- Place of death: New Rochelle, New York
Ruby Dee’s career as an actor, writer, and producer spanned more than seven decades. She was also known for her decades-long marriage to actor Ossie Davis and their combined efforts to promote peace and human rights through activism and the arts.
Early Life
Born Ruby Ann Wallace in Cleveland, Ohio, Ruby Dee moved with her two older siblings and father, Marshall Edward Wallace, to New York after her birth mother, Gladys Hightower, left the family. Her father and his second wife, Emma Amelia Benson, bought an apartment in Harlem, where the family settled. Emma brought art, literature, and a high expectation of achievement into the household. Emma strongly encouraged the children’s creativity. Endowed with talent, beauty, and ideas, Dee began early to prepare for what would become her life’s work.
Dee entered Hunter College to study French and Spanish, but she felt destined to become a performer. She joined the newly formed American Negro Theater (ANT) in Harlem and began acting. During this time, she married a singer, Frankie Dee Brown. Working with the ANT exposed her to the world of entertainment. After graduating from Hunter College in 1945 with a bachelor’s degree in romance languages, she changed her name to Ruby Dee, divorced Brown, and began a professional acting career.
Life’s Work
From the beginning of her career, Dee fused her creative work with the social and racial issues of the time. With the ANT, Dee appeared in such productions as On Strivers Row (1940) and Anna Lucasta (1946), dramas that depicted African American lives and played to mostly black audiences. In 1946, she moved to Broadway to appear in Jeb, a play about an African American World War II veteran who returns home from his military service only to face the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan. The title character was played by Ossie Davis. They married two years later. In 1950, the couple appeared in their first film, playing husband and wife in No Way Out, a story about racial tensions. Dee would reprise the long-suffering wife role in several more films of the era, such as The Jackie Robinson Story (1950), The St. Louis Blues (1958), and in 1961, as Ruth Younger in the breakthrough film adaptation of A Raisin in the Sun, for which Dee won the National Board of Review Award for best supporting actress. Her performances garnered favorable reviews for the intensity and depth she brought to major and minor roles.
By the 1960s, Dee had become a wife and mother in real life as well. She and Davis had three children, Nora, Hasna, and Guy. Dee was determined to balance career and motherhood. After A Raisin in the Sun, she began accepting more television roles on popular shows such as The Fugitive and The Defenders as well as on the soap operas Guiding Light and Peyton Place. In 1965, she appeared as Cordelia in King Lear and as Kate in The Taming of the Shrew, making her the first black woman to hold major roles at the American Shakespeare Festival. In 1970, she appeared in an Off-Broadway production of Boesman and Lena, playing a South African woman dispossessed of her home. For this performance, she won an Obie Award and a Drama Desk Award. Dee also began writing and producing for films and television. She coproduced the film Uptight (1968), published the award-winning children's book Two Ways to Count to Ten: A Liberian Folktale (1988), and, with Davis, produced a show for PBS that highlighted the works of African American writers, artists, and actors.
In the 1960s, Dee and Davis intensified their civil rights and human rights activism. During the civil rights movement, they marched and gave speeches and counted among their friends Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Dee even served as the emcee for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where King gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. With their children, they were active campaigners for social justice.
With hundreds of film and television credits and dozens of stage roles, Dee won numerous awards over her long career. At the age of eighty-three, Dee received her first Oscar nomination, for the best performance by an actress in a supporting role, for her performance in Spike Lee’s American Gangster (2007). She also won the Screen Actors Guild Award for outstanding performance by a female actor in a supporting role for American Gangster. She won an Emmy Award for outstanding supporting actress in a miniseries or special for her role in the 1990 television film Decoration Day. With Davis, she won a Grammy Award in 2007 for best spoken word album for their reading of their joint autobiography, With Ossie and Ruby: In This Life Together. Dee also received the National Medal of Arts, the Kennedy Center Honor in 2004, the Harvard Foundation’s 2007 Humanitarian Award, and a lifetime achievement award from the National Civil Rights Museum in 2005.
Dee died on June 11, 2014, at her home in New Rochelle, New York, at the age of ninety-one.
Significance
Although Dee was never cast in a leading role in any major Hollywood films, her acting talent is undeniable and her career was remarkable. She proved herself to be accomplished in a broad range of roles: as an actor, a civil rights activist, and writer. Well into the twenty-first century, she continued to do the work she and Davis began together in the 1940s.
Bibliography
Bogle, Donald. Brown Sugar: Over One Hundred Years of America’s Black Female Superstars. New York: Continuum, 2007. Print.
Davis, Ossie. Life Lit by Some Large Vision: Selected Speeches and Writings. Ed. Ruby Dee. New York: Atria, 2006. Print.
Davis, Ossie, and Ruby Dee. With Ossie and Ruby: In This Life Together. New York: Morrow, 1998. Print.
Dee, Ruby. My One Good Nerve. New York: Wiley, 1999. Print.
Dee, Ruby. “Some Reflections on the Negro Actress: The Tattered Queens.” Negro Digest 15.6 (1966): 32–36. Print.
Del Barco, Mandalit. "Ruby Dee: An Actress Who Marched on Washington and onto the Screen." Code Switch. NPR, 12 June 2014. Web. 13 June 2014.
Duke, Alan, and Todd Leopold. "Ruby Dee Was a Formidable Force on Screen, in Civil Rights Movement." CNN Entertainment. Cable News Network, 12 June 2014. Web. 13 June 2014.
Weber, Bruce. "Ruby Dee, A Ringing Voice for Civil Rights, Onstage and Off, Dies at 91." New York Times. New York Times, 12 June 2014. Web. 13 June 2014.