Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee photographs

1940s-2012

This biographical note was written in 2019 by Amelia Carlin and Heather Lember for the Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee papers (edited by Nathan Evans in 2024).

Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee were African-American performing artists, writers, and activists. They worked collaboratively and independently throughout their careers as actors, authors, directors, playwrights, producers, and voice-over narrators. Their work spanned the mediums of film, television, radio, and theater. Together they also published collections of poetry and essays, a joint memoir, articles, books for children, plays, and speeches.

Ossie Davis (born Raiford Chatman Davis) was born in 1917 in Cogdell, Georgia. He left Georgia in 1935 to attend Howard University, where he studied English and drama, then moved to the Harlem neighborhood in New York City with the intent of establishing a stage career as a playwright. In Harlem, Davis joined the Rose McClendon Players and studied acting with Lloyd Richards. He made his stage debut in a 1939 production of Joy Exceeding Glory.

Dee was born Ruby Ann Wallace in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1922. Her family moved to Harlem soon after she was born. Dee earned a Bachelor's degree from Hunter College in New York City, where she studied French and Spanish. Between 1940 and 1945, she apprenticed with the American Negro Theatre which occupied the basement stage of the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library. She studied radio techniques at the American Theatre Wing, and appeared on a number of radio shows. Dee made her stage debut in a production of Abram Hill's On Strivers Row in 1940. The following year she married the blues singer, Frankie Dee Brown, retaining his name after they divorced in 1945.

Dee and Davis were cast together in the Broadway production of Jeb, which was Davis' Broadway debut, launching his professional theater career. In 1946, Davis and Dee were cast together again in the American Negro Theatre's production of Philip Yordan's Anna Lucasta. Dee replaced Hilda Simms in the lead, and remained in the starring role when the play moved to Broadway. On December 9, 1948, the couple married during a single-day break in their work on a production of Smile of the World.

Dee was cast in the role of the Defending Angel in the 1953 off-Broadway production of The World of Sholom Aleichem. The play, stage managed by Davis, marked one of the first times that a Black actor appeared on Broadway or off-Broadway in a role not specifically written for a Black character. Five years later, in 1958, Davis and Dee were called to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee as a result of their perceived communist sympathies. Although they were not officially blacklisted, Davis and Dee were surveilled by the FBI. During this period, as a means of generating work, they performed readings, dramatizations, short works, and gave talks at schools, churches, colleges, and other community spaces.

In 1959, Dee was cast opposite Sidney Poitier in the lead role of Ruth Younger in Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, which was the first play by a Black woman to be produced on Broadway. Davis assumed the part of Walter Lee after Poitier left the production, and Dee reprised her role opposite Poitier for the film version in 1961. Four years later, Dee became the first Black woman to play a lead role at the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut, where she was cast in the role of Kate in The Taming of the Shrew.

During the 1950s and 1960s, Davis continued to act in theater productions as well as write for the stage. Among Davis' many playwriting credits, his most widely known work is Purlie Victorious (1961), which satirized racial stereotypes in the American South. Davis and Dee played the lead roles in the theatrical production, which Davis then adapted for the screen in 1963's Gone are the Days. Davis also directed a number of films throughout the 1970s including Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970) Kongi's Harvest (1970) Black Girl (1972), Gordon's War (1973), and Countdown at Kusini (1976).

Dee's writing debut came in 1979 with Take it from the Top, which was directed by Davis, and featured music by the couple's son, Guy Davis. Dee's other writing credits include John Boscoe and the Devil (1981), Zora is my Name (1983), Aunt Zurletha (1985), The Disappearance (1993), and My One Good Nerve (1996).

Davis and Dee began hosting a weekly radio show, The Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee Story Hour, in 1975. Five years later, along with their three children, they formed Emmalyn Productions, also referred to as Emmalyn II Productions or Emmalyn Enterprises. Among their various projects for the company was the Davis- and Dee-hosted television show, With Ossie and Ruby (1981-1982, 1985). In 1997, the couple published the joint autobiography, With Ossie and Ruby: In This Life Together, to commemorate their fiftieth marriage anniversary.

Davis and Dee were activists throughout their lives, and prominent in the civil rights movement. The couple was close to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and were instrumental in fundraising and publicizing his work and that of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Davis and Dee were also founding members of the Association of Artists for Freedom. They were organizers and fundraisers for the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Davis was responsible for the entertainment programming and served as emcee of the morning's proceedings. From the mid-1950s onwards, they were closely involved with the labor union Local 1199, and beginning in the late 1970s, with its cultural program "Bread and Roses." Additionally, Davis and Dee raised money for the Freedom Riders, were decades-long supporters of the Sickle Cell Disease Association of New York, and were friends with Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz. Davis eulogized Malcolm X at his funeral in 1965, and famously re-created the eulogy as a voice-over in Spike Lee's 1992 film, Malcolm X.

Davis and Dee garnered a number of prestigious awards acknowledging their contributions to the American stage, film, television, and for their activism. This includes the NAACP Image Awards, the National Medal of Arts, the Kennedy Center Honors, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences' Silver City Award, and the lifetime achievement award of the Screen Actors' Guild. Additionally, Dee was awarded two Emmys, an Obie, a Drama Desk Award, and an Oscar nomination for her performance in American Gangster (2007). Davis earned Emmy nominations for his work in Teacher, Teacher (1969), King (1978), and Miss Evers' Boys (1997), and was awarded a Daytime Emmy for his role in the children's special Finding Buck McHenry (2001).

Davis died on February 4, 2005 while filming Retirement in Florida; Dee was in New Zealand filming Naming Number Two at the time. She died on June 11, 2014 at her home in New Rochelle, New York.