Civil rights champion used the arts as part of struggle
Actress Ruby Dee earned Oscar nomination at 83 for supporting actress role in film American Gangster
NEW YORK — Ruby Dee was an acclaimed performer and civil rights activist whose versatile career spanned stage, radio, television and film.
She died Wednesday at age 91 of natural causes at home in New Rochelle, Conn.
Dee’s 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.
“I think you mustn’t tell your body, you mustn’t tell your soul, ‘ I’m going to retire,’ ” Dee told The Associated Press in 2001. “You may be changing your life emphasis, but there’s still things that you have in mind to do that now seems the right time to do. I really don’t believe in retiring as long as you can breathe.”
Dee frequently acted alongside her husband of 56 years, Ossie Davis. Since meeting on Broadway in 1946, she and her late husband were frequent collaborators. 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, Miss., in 2006. “Ossie said he knew he had to conduct himself differently with skill and thought.”
In 1998, the pair celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary and an even longer association in show business with the publication of a dual autobiography, With Ossie and Ruby: In This Life Together.
Davis died in February 2005.
Davis and Dee met in 1945 when she auditioned for the Broadway play Jeb, starring Davis ( both were cast in it). In December 1948, on a day off from rehearsals from another play, The Smile of the World, Davis and Dee took a bus to New Jersey to get married.
Like her husband, Dee was active in civil rights issues and efforts to promote the cause of blacks in the entertainment industry
Among her best- known films was A Raisin in the Sun, in 1961, the classic play that explored racial discrimination and black frustration.