Ruby Dee (née Wallace; October 27, 1922 – June 11, 2014) was an American actress, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist and activist. She is perhaps best known for co-starring in the film A Raisin in the Sun (1961) and the film American Gangster (2007) for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She was the recipient of Grammy, Emmy, Obie, Drama Desk, Screen Actors Guild Award, and Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Awards as well as the National Medal of Arts and the Kennedy Center Honors. She was married to actor Ossie Davis until his death in 2005.

Early life

Dee was born Ruby Ann Wallace in Cleveland, Ohio in 1922, to Gladys Hightower and Marshall Edward Nathaniel Wallace, a cook, waiter and porter. After her mother left the family, Dee's father remarried, to Emma Amelia Benson, a schoolteacher.

Dee was raised in Harlem, New York. She attended Hunter College High School and went on to graduate from Hunter College with a degree in romance languages in 1945. She was a member of Delta Sigma Theta.

Career

Dee joined the American Negro Theater as an apprentice, working with Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, and Hilda Simms. She made several appearances on Broadway. Her first onscreen role was in That Man of Mine in 1946. She received national recognition for her role in the 1950 film The Jackie Robinson Story. In 1965, Dee performed in lead roles at the American Shakespeare Festival as Kate in The Taming of the Shrew and Cordelia in King Lear, becoming the first black actress to portray a lead role in the festival. Her career in acting crossed all major forms of media over a span of eight decades, including the films A Raisin in the Sun, in which she recreated her stage role as a suffering housewife in the projects, and Edge of the City. She played both roles opposite Poitier.

During the 1960s, Dee appeared in such politically charged films as Gone Are the Days and The Incident, which is recognized as helping pave the way for young African-American actors and filmmakers. In 1969, Dee appeared in 20 episodes of Peyton Place. She appeared in the role of as Cora Sanders, a Marxist college professor, in the Season 1/Episode 14 of Police Woman, entitled “Target Black” which aired on Friday night, January 3, 1975. The character of Cora Sanders was obviously, but loosely, influenced by the real-life Angela Y. Davis. She appeared in one episode of The Golden Girls' sixth season. She played Queen Haley in Roots: The Next Generations, a 1979 miniseries.

Dee was nominated for eight Emmy Awards, winning once for her role in the 1990 TV film Decoration Day. She was nominated for her television guest appearance in the China Beach episode, "Skylark". Her husband Ossie Davis (1917–2005) also appeared in the episode. She appeared in Spike Lee's 1989 film Do the Right Thing, and his 1991 film Jungle Fever.

In 1995, she and Davis were awarded the National Medal of Arts. They were also recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors in 2004. In 2003, she narrated a series of WPA slave narratives in the HBO film Unchained Memories. In 2007 the winner of the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album was shared by Dee and Ossie Davis for With Ossie And Ruby: In This Life Together, and former President Jimmy Carter.

Dee was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2007 for her portrayal of Mama Lucas in American Gangster. She won the Screen Actors Guild award for the same performance. At 83 years of age, Dee is currently the second oldest nominee for Best Supporting Actress, behind Gloria Stuart who was 87 when nominated for her role in Titanic. This was Dee's only Oscar nomination.

On February 12, 2009, Dee joined the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College orchestra and chorus, along with the Riverside Inspirational Choir and NYC Labor Choir, in honoring Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday at the Riverside Church in New York City. Under the direction of Maurice Peress, they performed Earl Robinson's The Lonesome Train: A Music Legend for Actors, Folk Singers, Choirs, and Orchestra, in which Dee was the Narrator.

Personal life and activism

Ruby Wallace married blues singer Frankie Dee Brown in 1941, and began using his last name as her stage name. The couple divorced in 1945. Three years later she married actor Ossie Davis, who she met while costarring in the 1946 Broadway play Jeb. Together, Dee and Davis wrote an autobiography in which they discussed their political activism and their open marriage. 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.

Dee and Davis were well-known civil rights activists. 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. In 1963, Dee emceed the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. 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. In 1970, she won the Frederick Douglass Award from the New York Urban League.

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.

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 Rodham Clinton and Nita Lowey. In 2009 she received an Honorary Degree from Princeton University.

Death

Dee died on June 11, 2014, at her home in New Rochelle, New York, from natural causes at the age of 91. 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, Ms. Dee embraced different creative platforms with her various interpretations of black womanhood and also used her gifts to champion for Human Rights. Her strength, courage and beauty will be greatly missed."

Dee will be cremated, and her ashes will be held in the same urn as that of Davis, with the inscription "In this thing together".

Work

Filmography

Features:

• That Man of Mine (1946)
• What a Guy (1948)
• The Fight Never Ends (1949)
• The Jackie Robinson Story (1950)
• No Way Out (1950)
• The Tall Target (1951)
• Go, Man, Go! (1954)
• The Great American Pastime (1956)
• Edge of the City (1957)
• Virgin Island (1958)
• St. Louis Blues (1958)
• Take a Giant Step (1959)
• A Raisin in the Sun (1961)
• Purlie Victorious (1961)
• The Balcony (1963)
• Gone Are the Days! (1963)
• The Incident (1967)
• Up Tight! (1968)
• King: A Filmed Record... Montgomery to Memphis (1970) (documentary)
• Buck and the Preacher (1972)
• Black Girl (1972)
• Wattstax (1973)
• Countdown at Kusini (1976)
• Cat People (1982)
• Do the Right Thing (1989)
• Love at Large (1990)
• Jungle Fever (1991)
• Color Adjustment (1992) (documentary) (narrator)
• Cop and a Half (1993)
• The Stand (1994)
• A Simple Wish (1997)
• Just Cause (1995)
• Mr. & Mrs. Loving (1996)
• A Time to Dance: The Life and Work of Norma Canner (1998) (documentary) (narrator)
• Baby Geniuses (1999)
• Baby of the Family (2002)
• Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives (2003) (documentary) (narrator)
• Beah: A Black Woman Speaks (2003) (documentary)
• No. 2 (2006)
• The Way Back Home (2006)
• Lockdown, USA (2006) (documentary) (narrator)
• All About Us (2007)
• American Gangster (2007)
• Steam (2007)
• The Perfect Age of Rock 'n' Roll (2009)
• A Place Out of Time: The Bordentown School (2009) (documentary) (narrator)
• Dream Street (2010)
• Video Girl (2011)
• Politics of Love (2011)
• Red & Blue Marbles (2011)
• Broadway: Beyond the Golden Age (2012) (documentary)
• Long Distance Revolutionary: A Journey With Mumia Abu-Jamal (2012)
• A Thousand Words (2012)
• Lifetime - Betty and Coretta (film) (2013)

Short subjects:

• Lorraine Hansberry: The Black Experience in the Creation of Drama (1975)
• The Torture of Mothers (1980)
• Tuesday Morning Ride (1995)
• The Unfinished Journey (1999) (narrator)
• The New Neighbors (2009) (narrator)

Television

• The First Year (1946)
• Seven Times Monday (1962)
• The Fugitive (TV series) (1963)
• Guiding Light (cast member in 1967)
• Peyton Place (cast member from 1968–1969)
• Deadlock (1969)
• The Sheriff (1971)
• Chelsea D.H.O. (1973) (unsold pilot)
• It's Good to Be Alive (1974)
• Police Woman Season 1 / Episode 14 "Target Black" (1975)
• Roots: The Next Generations (1979) (miniseries)
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1979)
• All God's Children (1980)
• Ossie and Ruby! (1980–1982)
• Long Day's Journey into Night (1982)
• Go Tell It on the Mountain (1985)
• The Atlanta Child Murders (1985) (miniseries)
• Windmills of the Gods (1988)
• Lincoln (1988)
• The Court-Martial of Jackie Robinson (1990)
• Decoration Day (1990)
• Golden Girls (1990)
• Jazztime Tale (1991) (voice)
• Middle Ages (1992–1993)
• The Ernest Green Story (1993)
• The Stand (1994) (miniseries)
• Whitewash (1994) (voice)
• Mr. and Mrs. Loving (1996)
• Captive Heart: The James Mink Story (1996)
• The Wall (1998)
• Little Bill (1999 – on hiatus) (voice)
• Passing Glory (1999)
• Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years (1999)
• A Storm in Summer (2000)
• Finding Buck McHenry (2000)
• The Feast of All Saints (2001) (miniseries)
• Taking Back Our Town (2001)
• Their Eyes Were Watching God (2005)
• Meet Mary Pleasant (2008)
• America (2009)

Stage

• On Strivers Row (1940)
• Natural Man (1941)
• Starlight (1942)
• Three's a Family (1943)
• South Pacific (1943)
• Walk Hard (1944)
• Jeb (1946)
• Anna Lucasta (1946) (replacement for Hilda Simms)
• Arsenic and Old Lace (1946)
• John Loves Mary (1946)
• A Long Way From Home (1948)
• The Smile of the World (1949)
• The World of Sholom Aleichem (1953)
• A Raisin in the Sun (1959)
• Purlie Victorious (1961)
• A Treasury of Negro World Writing (1964)
• King Lear (1965)
• The Taming of the Shrew (1965)
• The Talking Skull (1965)
• The Wedding Band (1966)
• Agamemnon (1966)
• The Birds (1966)
• Oresteia (1966)
• Boesman and Lena (1970)
• The Imaginary Invalid (1971)
• The Wedding Band (1972)
• Hamlet (1975)
• Bus Stop (1979)
• Twin-Bit Gardens (1979)
• Zora is My Name! (1983)
• Checkmates (1988)
• The Glass Menagerie (1989)
• The Disappearance (1993)
• Flying West (1994)
• Two Hahs-Hahs and a Homeboy (1995)
• My One Good Nerve: A Visit with Ruby Dee (1996)
• A Last Dance for Sybil (2002)
• Saint Lucy's Eyes (2003)

Discography

• The Original Read-In for Peace in Vietnam (Folkways Records, 1967)
• The Poetry of Langston Hughes (with Ossie Davis. Caedmon Records, no date, TC 1272)
• What if I am a Woman?, Vol. 1: Black Women's Speeches (Folkways, 1977)
• What if I am a Woman?, Vol. 2: Black Women's Speeches (Folkways, 1977)
• Every Tone a Testimony (Smithsonian Folkways, 2001)

Awards and nominations

Awards

• 1961: National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress – A Raisin in the Sun
• 1971: Drama Desk Award Outstanding Performance – Boesman and Lena
• 1971: Obie Award for Best Performance by an Actress – Boesman and Lena
• 1973: Drama Desk Award Outstanding Performance – Wedding Band
• 1991: Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie – Decoration Day
• 1991: Women in Film Crystal Award
• 1995: National Medal of Arts
• 2000: Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award
• 2007: Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album – With Ossie And Ruby: In This Life Together
• 2008: African–American Film Critics Best Supporting Actress – American Gangster
• 2008: Screen Actors Guild Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role – American Gangster
• 2008: The Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Medal Award
• 2008: She was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP.

Nominations

• 1964: Emmy Award for Outstanding Single Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role – The Doctors and the Nurses: Express Stop from Lenox Avenue
• 1979: Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or a Special – Roots: The Next Generations
• 1988: Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Special – Lincoln
• 1990: Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series – China Beach: Skylark
• 1993: Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series – Evening Shade: They Can't Take That Away from Me
• 1995: Emmy Award for Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program – Whitewash
• 2001: Emmy Award for Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program – Little Bill
• 2002: Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Actress – Saint Lucy's Eyes
• 2003: Emmy Award for Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program – Little Bill
• 2008: Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role – American Gangster
• 2008: Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture – American Gangster
• 2008: Satellite Award Best Supporting Actress – American Gangster
• 2008: Screen Actors Guild Outstanding Cast in a Motion Picture – American Gangster
• 2009: Screen Actors Guild Outstanding Performance by a Female Actress in a Television Movie or Miniseries – America
• 2010: Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Television Movie, Mini-Series or Dramatic Event – America