Ruby Dee a Legend in Her Own Time

Ruby Dee a Legend In Her Own Time

Ruby Dee, the actress was born in Harlem where she is still treated like royalty. When she goes in a restaurant she is greeted by a standing ovation and a rush for photos. Dee is a Harlem fixture. She has an abiding love for the place where she was raised from infancy. Says Dee, “This place has formed so much of my experience, If I wasn’t from Harlem, who would I be?”  Dee says it’s her connection with this place that gave her performance in “American Gangster” such intensity. “I understand women like Mama Lucas. I knew these women, and as a mother I can empathize with the dread of a mother knowing her child has turned out this way.”

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When an interviewer said to Ruby Dee in 2005 “You have had a long and varied career.” She interrupted with ” Say you are having.” At the time she was 80 years old. Last year she won a Grammy, then a Screen Actors Guild award, and later her first Academy Award for her performance in “American Gangster.” The lady has staying power.

Ruby Dee and her deceased husband Ossie Davis spent their lives pushing the boundaries. They were close friends with Malcolm X and King. Davis spoke at both funerals. Both Dee and Davis risked their careers by opposing McCarthyism, and were blacklisted as a result. In 1999 they were both arrested while protesting the NYPD shooting of Amadou Dialo.

When her husband died Dee was filming “Naming Number Two” in New Zealand. She flew home to bury her husband and was back on the set in two weeks. Dee says, “He always said he didn’t want me to live like I could stop him from dying, He could be brutal in his logic.” When speaking about her husband, Dee doesn’t hesitate to speak about her life in the past tense. She likes to speak about his sense of humor, an example is the inscription he wrote on the urn that will hold both their ashes someday, “In this thing together.” Dee and Davis were married 57 years and in spite of her grief she is still looking ahead to more accomplishments in the future.

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