In Memoriam : Acting legend Ruby Dee dies at 91

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Ruby Dee, the award-winning actress whose seven-decade career included triumphs on stage and screen, has died. She was 91.

According to her representative, Dee died peacefully in her New Rochelle, NY home.

Ruby Dee was an acting legend

Dee, most often with her late husband Ossie Davis, was a force to be reckoned with in both the performing arts community and the civil rights movement.

She was friends with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X and received the Frederick Douglass Award in 1970 from the New York Urban League.

As an actress, her film credits included “The Jackie Robinson Story” (1950), “A Raisin in the Sun” (1961), “Buck and the Preacher” (1972), “Do the Right Thing” (1989) and “American Gangster” (2007).

Dee earned an Oscar nomination for her performance in “Gangster.” She also won an Emmy and Grammy for other work.

Born as Ruby Ann Wallace in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1922, she moved to New York’s Harlem as a child. She took the surname Dee after marrying blues singer Frankie Dee two decades later. She divorced Dee after a short marriage and was wedded to Davis in 1948. Davis preceded his wife in death in 2005.

Her acting career started in New York in the 1940s, first appearing onscreen in the 1946 musical “That Man of Mine.” A role in “The Jackie Robinson Story” brought her national attention.

Dee became known to a younger generation with roles in two Spike Lee films. She co-starred with Davis in Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” and in his 1991 film “Jungle Fever”.

Her television work included 20 episodes of “Peyton Place” in 1969 and the role of Queen Haley in the 1979 miniseries “Roots: The Next Generation.”

Source : CNN