Birthday Greetings Ruby Dee Actress, Poet, Journalist … .
Ruby Dee
🎂Ruby Dee (aka Ruby Ann Wallace) was born October 27, 1922 in Cleveland, Ohio and raised in Harlem, New York. Ruby was an actress, poet, journalist, and activist. Her acting career has crossed all major forms of media over a span of eight decades, including films such as “A Raisin in the Sun” opposite Sidney Poitier (1961), “Uptight” (1968), “Buck and the Preacher” (1972), “Roots” (1978), “Do The Right Thing” (1989), and “The Delany Sisters: The First Hundred Years” (1999). She was married to Ossie Davis with whom she often performed until his death in 2005, and, they had one son, Guy Davis, born in 1952. She was nominated for the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in “American Gangster” (2007). For that same role she won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Female Actor in a Supporting Role. Ruby was a Grammy, Emmy, Obie and Drama Desk winner. She was also a National Medal of Arts, Kennedy Center Honors recipient.
The Coalition of Theatres of Color (CTC) was first convened in 2004 by the late Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee to address the inequity of funding to chronically underfunded theaters of color.
Ruby joined the American Negro Theater as an apprentice, working with Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, and Hilda Simms. She was cast in starring roles at the American Shakespeare Festival, in “The Taming of the Shrew” and “King Lear”, becoming the first black actress to portray lead roles in the festival. She was a member of Delta Sigma Theta. Angela Davis with Ossie Davs and Ruby Dee (2002)
- A Legacy of Inspiration — It’s Called Gospel Music! - 07/14/2022
- Oscar Brown Brought African-American Daily Life into Focus - 12/03/2021
- Jump for Joy It’s Billy Strayhorn’s Birthday - 11/30/2021
My younger daughter met her son Guy, when she was a young child. He talked to her about playing guitar. (This was at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.)