RUBY DEE, 91 Acclaimed actress, civil-rights activist remembered

By KAREN MATTHEWS and MARK KENNEDY

Associated Press

NEW YORK

Ruby Dee, an acclaimed actor and civil-rights activist whose versatile career spanned stage, radio television and film, has died at age 91, according to her daughter.

Nora Davis Day told The Associated Press on Thursday that her mother died at home in New Rochelle on Wednesday night of “natural causes.”

Dee, who frequently acted alongside her husband of 56 years, Ossie Davis, was surrounded by family and friends, she added.

Her long career brought her an Oscar nomination at age 83 for best supporting actress for her role in the 2007 film “American Gangster.” She also won an Emmy and was nominated for several others. Age didn’t slow her down.

Since meeting on Broadway in 1946, she and her late husband were frequent collaborators. Their partnership rivaled the achievements of other celebrated performing couples, such as Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy.

But they were more than a performing couple. They were also activists who fought for civil rights, particularly for blacks.

“We used the arts as part of our struggle,” she said at an appearance in Jackson, Mississippi, in 2006. “Ossie said he knew he had to conduct himself differently with skill and thought.”

Davis died in February 2005. At his funeral, his widow sat near his coffin as former President Clinton led an array of famous mourners, including Harry Belafonte and Spike Lee.

They shared billing in 11 stage productions and five movies during long parallel careers.

Like her husband, Dee was active in civil-rights issues and efforts to promote the cause of blacks in the entertainment industry. As young performers, they found themselves caught up the growing debate over social and racial justice in the United States. The couple’s push for social justice was lifelong: In 1999, the couple was arrested while protesting the shooting death of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed African immigrant, by New York City police.

Among her best-known films was “A Raisin in the Sun,” in 1961, the classic play that explored racial discrimination and black frustration. On television, she was a leading cast member on the soap operas such in the 1950s and ‘60s, a rare sight for a black actress in the 1950s and 60s.

Most recently, Dee performed her one-woman stage show, “My One Good Nerve: A Visit With Ruby Dee,” in theaters across the country. The show was a compilation of some of the short stories, humor and poetry in her book of the same title.

She is survived by three children and seven grandchildren.