http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...ME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-06-12-13-07-56 NEW YORK (AP) -- For Ruby Dee, acting and activism were not contradictory things. They were inseparable and they were intertwined. The African-American actress who earned lead roles in movies and on Broadway also spent her entire life fighting against injustice, even emceeing the 1963 March on Washington and protesting apartheid in South Africa. "We are image makers. Why can't we image makers become peacemakers, too?" she asked after she and her husband Ossie Davis accepted the Screen Actors Guild Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2000. That legacy of entertaining and pushing for change - in addition to her epic love affair with Davis - made Dee, who died at age 91 in her New Rochelle, New York, home on Wednesday night, a beloved figure in America and beyond. Broadway theaters will dim their lights in her honor Friday night.
She led demonstrations. She opposed the Rosenburg executions. She knew both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. She had a B.A. in French. The list of her black equality accomplishments is as long as her filmography.
If anyone remembers the Stephen King movie, "The Stand," she was the old lady (Abigail Freemantle) who represented good. I remember seeing a documentary about the time when the movie was made where they showed how much makeup they put on her to make her look like she was over 100 years old. She was pretty old even back then, but still a remarkable beauty.
NOPE. NEVER WATCHED THE STAND. I CHECKED IMDB, ONLY MOVIE I'VE WATCHED SHE WAS IN WAS "AMERICAN GANGSTA" WHERE SHE APPARANTLY PLAYED DENZEL WASHINGTONS MOM.
Martha Hyer died, too. She did just about every man she ever met. http://www.glamourgirlsofthesilverscreen.com/show/138/Martha Hyer/index.html
