Dee, Ruby

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Dee, Ruby

October 27, 1924

Born Ruby Ann Wallace in Cleveland, Ohio, actress Ruby Dee and her family soon moved to New York City and settled in Harlem. After graduating from high school, Dee attended Hunter College, and from 1941 to 1944 she prepared for a stage career at the American Negro Theater. In 1943 she made her Broadway debut with Canada Lee in Harry Rigsby and Dorothy Heyward's South Pacific (not to be confused with the later Rodgers and Hammerstein musical of the same name). She had her first starring role on Broadway in Jeb, alongside Ossie Davis. Two years later she married Davis, who subsequently appeared with her in several productions. Her notable New York theater performances include A Raisin in the Sun (1959); Purlie Victorious (1961); Boseman and Lena (1971), for which she won a 1971 Obie Award; and Wedding B and (1972–1973), for which she won a Drama Desk Award (1974).

Dee's film debut was in the role of Rachel Robinson in The Jackie Robinson Story (1950). She went on to perform in St. Louis Blues (1957), A Raisin in the Sun (1961), Gone Are the Days (1963), and Buck and the Preacher (1971). In 1965 she joined the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut, and was the first black actress to play major roles in the company. In 1975 Dee and Ossie Davis received a special award from Actor's Equity for "outstanding creative contributions both in the performing arts and in society at large." Dee collaborated on the screenplay for Uptight in 1968 and wrote the Off-Broadway musical Twin-Bit Gardens (1979).

Together with Ossie Davis, Dee has long been a participant in civil rights efforts. She has served on national committees of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and has performed in numerous fund-raising benefits. In the late 1960s she hosted benefits for the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords. In 1970 Dee and Davis were presented with the Frederick Douglass Award by the New York Urban League. Her other activities include reading for the blind, raising money to fight drug addiction, and helping black women study drama through the Ruby Dee Scholarship in Dramatic Art, established in the late 1960s. A frequent reader of poetry and drama in national tours, she has also written several books of poetry and short stories, including Glowchild (1972), My One Good Nerve (1987), Two Ways to Count to Ten (1988), and Tower to Heaven (1991). Dee has contributed columns to the New York Amsterdam News, and she was the assistant editor of the magazine Freedomways in the early 1960s.

Dee has been seen in the films Cat People (1982) and Do the Right Thing (1989). Television appearances include her Public Television Series With Ossie and Ruby (1981), the Negro Ensemble Company's production of Long Day's Journey into Night (1983), and the Hallmark Hall of Fame production Decoration Day (1991), for which she was awarded an Emmy. In 1990 Dee wrote the script and starred in the American Playhouse production Zora Is My Name, a one-woman show based on the life and work of Zora Neale Hurston. In 1998 Dee and Davis celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary by publishing a joint memoir, With Ossie and Ruby Dee: In This Life Together. Dee received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in December, 2004. Her husband Ossie Davis died two months later at the age of 87.