Ruby Dee

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Lore & Background

Ruby Dee possessed a slender, graceful frame and a warm, expressive face that conveyed deep intelligence and resilience. Her range as an actress spanned stage, film, and television, from originating the weary yet dignified Ruth Younger in *A Raisin in the Sun* on Broadway to portraying the comedic Lutiebell Gussie Mae Jenkins in *Purlie Victorious*. She appeared in landmark films such as *The Jackie Robinson Story*, *Edge of the City*, and Spike Lee’s *Do the Right Thing*, and later earned an Academy Award nomination for her role in *American Gangster*. Her habitat was the American stage and screen, particularly New York City, where she began as an apprentice with the American Negro Theatre and made her Broadway debut in 1943. She was raised in Harlem after being born in Cleveland, and she graduated from Hunter College with a degree in Romance languages. Defining characteristics include her decades-long artistic partnership with husband Ossie Davis, her pioneering role as the first Black actress to play a lead at the American Shakespeare Festival, and her receipt of major honors including the National Medal of Arts, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award, and the Kennedy Center Honors.

Reader's Guide

Ruby Dee’s career spanned eight decades across stage, film, television, and audio recording, establishing her as a foundational figure in American performance. She began as an apprentice with the American Negro Theatre, working alongside Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte, and made her Broadway debut in 1943. Her breakthrough came in 1959 when she originated the role of Ruth Younger in Lorraine Hansberry’s *A Raisin in the Sun*, the first Broadway play by a Black woman; she later reprised this part in the 1961 film. She also originated the role of Lutiebell Gussie Mae Jenkins in her husband Ossie Davis’s play *Purlie Victorious* (1961) and its 1963 film adaptation. In 1965, she became the first Black actress to play lead roles at the American Shakespeare Festival, performing as Kate in *The Taming of the Shrew* and Cordelia in *King Lear*. Her film work included leading roles in *The Jackie Robinson Story* (1950), *Edge of the City* (1957), and later Spike Lee’s *Do the Right Thing* (1989) and *Jungle Fever* (1991). For her performance in *American Gangster* (2007), she earned an Academy Award nomination and won a Screen Actors Guild Award. On television, she won a Primetime Emmy for *The Doctors and the Nurses* (1964) and received multiple nominations for *Roots: The Next Generations*, *Lincoln*, *China Beach*, and *Evening Shade*. She also voiced Alice the Great in the Nick Jr. series *Little Bill* from 1999 to 2004. Dee received the National Medal of Arts in 1995, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2000, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2004. Her partnership with Ossie Davis, both onstage and in life, was a defining feature of her career, and her work consistently advanced the representation of Black artists in American culture.

Did You Know?

• Ruby Dee was a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority.
• She originated the role of Ruth Younger in Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun on Broadway in 1959.