Ruby Dee, activist, artist, remembered in New Rochelle and everywhere (LoHud - June 13, 2014) #Harlem/#RockThoseReads News: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library EXCERPT: Dee and Davis were activists way back, fighting for justice near and far. And they didnt shy away from taking unpopular stands. They protested the 1953 execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, accused of passing atomic secrets to the Soviets and sent to the electric chair at Sing Sing. They stood by Paul Robeson after the singer-actor was blacklisted as a communist. They marched on Washington with Martin Luther King Jr. Davis eulogized Malcolm X. The two were arrested during the protests in New York City after the police shooting of Amadou Diallo. They were honored members of the Congress of Racial Equality, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The couple was inducted into the NAACP Image Awards Hall of Fame, and received the National Medal of Arts and the Kennedy Center Honors. Dee earned a Grammy, an Emmy and a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination. Dees professional life was a series of firsts: She was the first black actress to work with the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut, and the first black actress to have a role in a prime-time TV series, Peyton Place. Her professional career brought her to Broadway, to the big and small screen, to locations around the world. But she and Davis chose New Rochelle to raise a family, to dig in, to call home. New Rochelle, the city in which she raised her family, in many ways reflected the countrys struggles and glimmers of hope when it came to equality. Back in the 1830s, New Rochelle hosted a vibrant anti-slavery society, started by Lucretia Mott, who went on to fight for womens suffrage. Anna Jones, a city resident, became the first African-American woman admitted to the New York State Bar in 1923. The school district was the site of a test for Brown v. Board of Education, with the 1962 shuttering of the all-black Lincoln School to usher in desegregation. An actress with an international resume, Dee was still about community. Dee and Davis raised their three children in New Rochelle; she volunteered and joined in such events as the Great Read Aloud in a local elementary school. On her 90th birthday, Dee was feted at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, where she had been raised.
Posted on: Fri, 13 Jun 2014 15:20:39 +0000
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