The Legendary actress, Civil Rights Activist and award-winning actress, Ruby Dee whose seven-decade career included triumphs on stage and screen, has died. She was 91.
Dee died peacefully at her New Rochelle, New York, home on Wednesday, according to her representative, Michael Livingston.
Dee — often with her late husband, Ossie Davis — was a formidable force in both the performing arts community and the civil rights movement. She was friends with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X and received the Frederick Douglass Award in 1970 from the National Urban League.
Born as Ruby Ann Wallace in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1922, 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.
