Actress & Activist Ruby Dee Passes

Actress Ruby Dee passed Wednesday in New Rochelle, N.Y. She was 91.

The Cleveland-born, New York-raised actress and activist — winner of an Emmy, a Grammy and a Screen Actors Guild award, among others — not only starred on Broadway (“Take It From the Top!,’ “Two Hah Hahs and a Homeboy”), film (Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” and “Jungle Fever”), and TV (“All God’s Children,” “Feast of All Saints”), but, with her husband and collaborator Ossie Davis, was a major figure in the Civil Rights movement.

In 2005, Ruby & Ossie received the National Civil Rights Museum’s Lifetime Achievement Freedom award. Ossie died in February of that year.

Ruby’s first film role came in 1949, in the musical drama “That Man of Mine.” She played Rachel Robinson in “The Jackie Robinson Story” in 1950, and costarred opposite Nat King.

In 1961, she recreated her stage triumph as Ruth Younger in “A Raisin in the Sun,” opposite Sidney Poitier, her Broadway costar.

She appeared in the 1979 TV movie “Roots: The Next Generation,” and costarred with Davis in their own short-lived 1980-81 show, “Ossie and Ruby!”

If you’re like me, you’re very familiar with her later work. Ruby and Ossie two played contentious neighbors in Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” (1989). She earned her sole Academy Award nomination, for Best Supporting Actress, for “American Gangster” (2007). (NewYorkDailyNews)