Legendary Actress and Activist Ruby Dee Was a Proud Soror of Delta Sigma Theta

Did you know that the legendary actress and civil rights activist Ruby Dee was a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.? She was one of the most respected artists and advocates of her generation, and she used every stage she stood on to fight for justice.

Ruby Dee was born on October 27, 1922, and raised in Harlem, where she fell in love with the theater as a young woman and went on to study at Hunter College. She was a soror of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. As Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. shared in honoring her, Dee was “an actress, civil rights advocate and philanthropist extraordinaire.”

Dee became a pioneering figure on stage and screen. She earned national recognition in the 1950 film The Jackie Robinson Story, and her most famous stage role came in 1959, when she played Ruth Younger in Lorraine Hansberry’s landmark play A Raisin in the Sun. Hansberry, too, was a member of Delta Sigma Theta, and among Dee’s co-stars in that production were Sidney Poitier, Glynn Turman, and Louis Gossett Jr. Over a career that spanned more than six decades, Dee won an Emmy, a Grammy, and a Screen Actors Guild Award, earned an Academy Award nomination for the 2007 film American Gangster, and was honored with the National Medal of Arts and, alongside her husband Ossie Davis, the Kennedy Center Honors.

Dee used her fame to fight for what she believed in. According to Delta Sigma Theta, she picketed Broadway theaters that refused to hire African American actors and spoke out against discriminatory film crews. She was an active member of CORE, SNCC, the SCLC, and the NAACP, and she served as an emcee at the historic 1963 March on Washington, lending her voice to one of the defining moments of the civil rights movement.

Ruby Dee died on June 11, 2014. From the stages of Broadway to the front lines of the movement, Delta Sigma Theta’s Ruby Dee exemplified the finest qualities of a woman of Delta Sigma Theta and spent her life in the service of her people.