Legendary Actress & Civil Rights Activist Ruby Dee Has Passed

[NYSTATEOFMIND]

Last a special breed..the revolutionary voice of our people is being replaced with foolishness..RIP Ruby

 

[NYC Rebel]

RIP = THE GODDESS RUBY DEE

one of the last of the mother matriarch's.
so now, we are really dwindling down to having no one left to provide clarity to our black women.

damn, i feel for this next gen.

y'all gon have it rough than a motherfukker.
real talk, moving forward the man and his agenda gon kick y'all future gen's unholy asses.
especially, because y'all don't respect history or have knowledge of self.
so, you won't have anyone who can help your gen moving forward.
y'all are fukked,...like royally fukked't.


art barr

Art....we're the flag bearers now of Ruby's generation dog. Let's put some responsibility on is before going at them.

 

[Taadow]

I usually don't come in these threads, but I had to give it up for Ruby Dee, mayne.

Even though she's been old since I was a child, she always seemed like one of those people
who will always be around. On the other hand, the idea of me living to be the age she was scares
me because who knows what the world will be like then...

 

[Deadpool1986]

Ruby Dee (pictured) passed away at 91, and she was truly a grand dame. She not only graced the large and small screens but the Broadway stage as well. She was a petite woman with a larger-than-life persona who possessed thespian skills that were honed to a tee. There will never be another Miss Dee, and thankfully, her immense body of work will live on. Therefore, here are 20 tidbits about the great Miss Dee that you may not know about.
1) Ruby Dee’s actual name was Ruby Ann Wallace. Even though it felt as if Dee was married to the late-brilliant actor Ossie Davis forever, he was actually her second husband. The name “Dee” came from her first husband, blues singer Frankie Dee Brown, whom she married in 1941 and divorced in 1945.

2) Dee was born in Cleveland but considered herself a native New Yorker as she was raised in Harlem. She lived in the Empire State all her life making New Rochelle her home until she quietly passed away from natural causes.

3) Playing the piano and violin as well as reading literature and writing poetry is how Dee spent the majority of her childhood. Dee’s father and stepmother wanted her to fully absorb the cultural explosion that was happening all around her in an era that would later be referred to as the “Harlem Renaissance.”

4) Even though she had a commanding persona and a powerful voice that could fill a room, Dee was diminutiveat only 5’2.”

5) As a graduate of New York City’s Hunter College in 1944, Dee obtained degrees in French and Spanish.

6) In 1965, Dee became the first Black actress to perform lead roles at the famed American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ct., wowing audiences with her portrayals of “Kate” in “The Taming of the Shrew” and “Cordelia” in “King Lear.”

7) Dee caught the acting bug during her college days, acting in small school productions like “South Pacific.”

8) The year 1946 brought about Dee’s first Broadway acting job, where she landed the female lead in the drama “Jeb,” which centered around racial intolerance. Coincidentally, she first laid eyes on her husband-to-be Ossie Davis who played the male lead in the play. The pair walked down the aisle two years after they met and remained together until Davis passed away in 2005.

9) Not only did Dee grace a Broadway stage in 1946 but the big screen as well in the film “Love in Syncopation.”

10) Dee’s most-memorable role was her riveting performing in the Broadway classic “A Raisin in the Sun” in 1959, when she played opposite co-stars Sidney Poitier, Louis Gossett, and Ivan Dixon. In 1961, the play became a movie, and Dee again landed the role of “Ruth Younger,” the wife of “Walter Lee Younger“ portrayed by Poitier.

11) There were no Black actresses on nighttime soap operas until Dee landed the role of a neurosurgeon’s wife named “Alma Miles” in 1968 on the hottest show on TV at the time, “Peyton Place.”

12) Dee tirelessly campaigned for civil rights. During the turbulent sixties, she and Davis joined forces with grassroots organizations and marched with the likes of such human rights titans as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and actor Harry Belafonte. In 1963, Dee and Davis founded the Association of Artists for Freedom, where they and other actors of the time sought social justice for such tragic cases as the 1963 Birmingham Church Bombing, when four little girls lost their lives due to the racially bias climate particularly in the South. Dee and her husband also served as a goodwill ambassadors to Lagos, Nigeria, in the sixties and in 1989 were voted in to the NAACP Image Award Hall of Fame. Dee was a member of the NAACP, CORE, Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, and Southern Christian Leadership Council.

13) Civil rights for her people was not the only cause Dee was passionate about; she also crusaded for underdogs across the board. She rallied against the Vietnam War and defended Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who were executed after being convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage. In 1999, Dee and Davis were arrested for protesting the fatal shooting of an unarmed West African immigrant, Amadou Diallo, by White police officers of the New York City Police Department.

14) Civil rights icon Malcolm X enjoyed a great and nurturing friendship with both Dee and her husband who even gave the eulogy at Malcolm’s funeral.

15) Never one to let anything keep her down, not even illness, Dee was a nearly a five-decade breast cancer survivor. When Dee was diagnosed, she underwent a lumpectomy, and as the surgeons were putting her to sleep, she uttered, “Count backward? I know the routine. I will not go under, get knocked out, surrender to oblivion!”

16) As much as “the First Couple of Black America” loved each other through the years, they once tried their hand at having an open marriage. In the pair’s joint book, “With Ossie and Ruby: In This Life Together,” published around their 50th year of marriage, the duo spoke of the challenges of their long union, including a phase in the 1960s in which they agreed they could sleep with other people when their work schedules kept them apart. The arrangement was short-lived, they said. “We ultimately decided that what we had chosen as a possibility didn’t really work for us,” Davis said in 1999.

17) Dee wore many creative hats and being an author was just another one of them. Gifted with a literary pen as well, she authored two children’s books, “Two Ways to Count to Ten” and “Tower to Heaven,” and a collection of poems and short stories called “My One Good Nerve,” which she also performed as a one-woman show.

18) In 2008, at age 83, Dee became the second-oldest actress to be nominated for an Academy Award.

19) The quintessential wordsmith, Dee took joy in the simplest sayings that packed quite a wallop. Her favorite quote from the book “Charlotte’s Web” illustrates this best: “‘Isn’t life peculiar!’ said Jeremy. ‘Compared to what?’ said the spider.’”

20) Miss Dee was a wonderful and loving force of nature who loved children; she had three of her own. She once took time out of her busy schedule to visit a poetry competition in the Bronx, N.Y. of young inner-city elementary school children. The third grader who won the competition had to read her creation in front of an audience. The child was petrified but she somehow forged on. After the little girl was through reading her winning poem, Miss Dee came up to the child, lovingly cupped the little girl’s cherubic face in her hands and told her she was just “BRILLIANT!” Miss Dee then gave the third grader a kiss on the cheek and told her she would go on to do great things.

That little girl was me.

You will certainly be missed, Miss Ruby Dee!
http://newsone.com/3019067/ruby-dee-wiki/

 

[Slimkid07]

My absolute favorite couple.
I was heartbroken for Ruby Dee when Ossie passed but now, I have a weird mixture of melancholy and happiness for her.
They are finally back together.

RIP to an absolutely incredible woman. Ruby and Ossie are the prototype from which we all should adhere to.

 

[ProfessionallyTrill]

Ruby and Ossie

They don't make love like that anymore

 

[Thatrogueassdiaz]

nooooo

 

[bl2k8]

Rip, that woman was fine back in the day too

 

[jwinfield]

My post in The GOAT Black Couple Thread

http://www.thecoli.com/threads/the-goat-black-couple.13875/#post-488785

Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossie_Davis

In 1989, Ossie Davis and his wife, actress/activist Ruby Dee, were named to the NAACP Image Awards Hall of Fame. In 1995, they were awarded the National Medal of Arts, the nation's highest honor conferred to an individual artist on behalf of the country and presented in a White House ceremony by the President of the United States. And in 2004, they were recipients of the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors.

According to the Kennedy Center Honors:
"The Honors recipients recognized for their lifetime contributions to American culture through the performing arts— whether in dance, music, theater, opera, motion pictures, or television — are selected by the Center’s Board of Trustees. The primary criterion in the selection process is excellence. The Honors are not designated by art form or category of artistic achievement; the selection process, over the years, has produced balance among the various arts and artistic disciplines."

They were well known as civil rights activists, and were close personal friends of Malcolm X, Jesse Jackson, Martin Luther King, Jr. and other icons of the era. Davis and Dee's deep involvement in the movement is characterized by how instrumental they were in organizing the 1963 civil rights March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, even to the point of serving as emcee. Davis, alongside Ahmed Osman, delivered the eulogy at the funeral of Malcolm X. He re-read part of this eulogy at the end of Spike Lee's film Malcolm X. He also delivered a stirring tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, at a memorial in New York's Central Park the day after King was assassinated in Memphis Tennessee.

http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2001/mar/010309.davisdee.html

Their work together on the American social scene began with strident opposition to Sen. Joseph McCarthy's Communist witchhunt in the 1950s and flowed into the civil rights movement a decade later. They served as masters of ceremonies for the 1963 March on Washington, scene of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Davis delivered the eulogy for Malcolm X after the black leader's 1965 assassination. They've sued in federal court to ensure black voting rights and they've been on the frontlines of latter-day efforts to protect equal rights for all.

 

[BedRoomI'z]

Her and Ossie are reunited.
Don't be sad. Her work here on Earth
Is complete

 

[Dameon Farrow]

Great actress. I remember her standing out from her performance in Jungle Fever. RIP.

 

[SuikodenII]

 

[Sbp]

RIP Mam

 

[GiGi]

Rest in peace lovely Ruby Dee

 

[jackswstd]

She's reunited with Ossie. RIP