Good evening and welcome to the sixth edition of Outstanding in the Field. A weekly Sunday evening diary dedicated to Americans outside the beltway who are working to improve life in American.
There are many stories to choose from today. There is the North Korean cultural exchange and the resurgence of Ping Pong Diplomacy. On CBS Sunday Morning Cynthia Bowers sat down with Chuck Feeney, the billionaire who gave it all way. There was also a marvelous segment on Elton John since tonight is the big night in his war on AIDS.
Since tonight is also the night of The 80th Annual Academy Awards this diary could be a celebration of the reality of Hollywood fiction vs. the media's so called facts. But since it is Oscar Night, tonight's diary is devoted to Ruby Dee who was nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category and had a very long career that was certainly outstanding in her field of endeavor.
Ruby Dee is nominated tonight for her five minute role in American Gangster. In her career that began in the late 1930s, including a very strong role in the theater community and important work in both television and movies, Ms, Dee has received many awards but has been overlooked for the Oscar many times. The 83 year nominee is the second oldest person and has less screen time than anyone who has ever been nominated in the Best Supporting role.
While Cate Blanchett may very well deserve the Best Actress Award, Ruby Dee is expected to receive a payback for a long career filled with many gems. Ms.Dee may receive the Oscar for another reason. In looking back at the long and distinguished career of Ruby Dee there is also a life long devotion to the advancement of civil rights.
For more than half a century, Ruby Dee has been a prominent stage, film, and television actress, a dynamic activist in support of civil rights, and a ceaseless promoter of African-American arts and culture. She has successfully married these elements throughout her career by acting, writing, directing, and producing work that grapples with difficult questions about racial and economic stratification in the United States. With her husband, actor Ossie Davis, Dee has been a defining force in the struggle for racial equality. In addition, she and Davis have used their talents and considerable popularity to encourage the creation of politically relevant, socially influential entertainment.
Even on the American stage, historically the most open environment for progressive thinking, taking a public stance was not always a career advancement. There is a short discussion of this fact and many more about doing the right thing in an interview with Ruby Dee on NPR's Wisdom Watch.
This woman’s career of social activism is filled with historic events. For six decades Ruby Dee and her husband, the late Ossie Davis fought for equal justice and human rights. This included being the Master and Mistress of Ceremonies at the 1963 March on Washington.
Together they helped pave the road for two generations of black performers, Sean Combs said when the couple was honored at the Kennedy Center in December. Mr. Davis replied: "We knew that every time we got a job and every time we were onstage, America was looking to make judgments about all black folks on the basis of how you looked, how you sounded, how you carried yourself. So any role you had was a role that was involved in the struggle for black identification. You couldn't escape it."
The end of the passage of that Kennedy Center Honors page sums up some of the passionate work of one of the most fearless couples of the American stage who worked so hard for change;
Their work, in fact, has always explored and celebrated the lessons of black history in the United States, making the couple, over the decades, an inspiration and iconic presence in contemporary African American culture. In 1976, they produced and Davis directed Countdown to Kusini, the first American feature to be shot entirely in Africa by black professionals. Through their company, Emmalyn Enterprises, they produced the 1986 PBS special "Martin Luther King: The Dream and the Drum." Also for PBS, they created the 1980-82 series "With Ossie and Ruby," and produced "A Walk Through the Twentieth Century with Bill Moyers" in 1984.
Both received the NAACP Image Awards for their 1996 CBS series "Promised Land," and delivered searing performances in Roots: The Next Generation. Their joint autobiography published in 2000, With Ossie and Ruby: In This Life Together, recounts their work together, not only in the arts, but also as artists at the forefront of political activism, ranging from their vigorous opposition to Senator Joseph McCarthy's Communist witch hunt to their tireless work on behalf of civil rights, voting rights and equal rights for all. "We need to make the changes, do the revolutions and make things right that will make it easier for our children and grandchildren," says Dee.
"Intensely committed they are to the idea that art and politics are inseparable. They both firmly believe that the arts have the capacity to make viewers more human and teach them, at least on some level, how to live (Stagebill)." Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee have been teaching us how to live all our lives.
As I was rooting around for whom to write about this morning I came across an October 5th interview with Tavis Smiley. The introduction alone was enough to blow me away.
More than six decades after her stage debut, Ruby Dee continues to make her mark on the arts. She was the first Black woman to play lead roles at the American Shakespeare Festival and has won numerous awards and honors for her work, including an Emmy, a Grammy and, recently, a SAG award and first-time ever Oscar nod. She's also being honored at Essence magazine's "Black Women in Hollywood" luncheon. A breast cancer survivor of more than 30 years, Dee is a novelist, poet and longtime human rights activist.
I can’t just cut and paste the entire fascinating interview or narrow it down to a few blockquotes. The whole interview just screams out living legend and humble American hero. From the memories of being in charge of the program at the 1963 March on Washington through the answer as to why the path of least resistance wasn’t chosen this is a person of greatest honor. In a description of early days of The American Negro Theater with legends like Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte a reason is given for her lifetime of social activism;
Dee: Well, what I like to remember about that time was the dream that Fred O'Neal and Abram Hill had. It rubbed off on all of us and we all became carriers of the dream, which made me realize that when we get awards and so forth and you get honored about this and that, at first it's "Oh, what have I done to get that?"
But it's not really true. There are the dream carriers. There are the people who pass on the dream for you to carry and you can't back away from it. You have to accept it and you have to pass it on and you have to become the elder. You have to pick up the weapons of defense and protect the tribe.
You have to take responsibility. You have to raise the children. You have to be an example and you have to make things work. So there's no such thing as backing down. When you finally realize that, that's when life becomes exciting. You don't have to be self-effacing. You don't have to say, "Oh, what I do is not too much" because whatever you do is enough if you can get it together and pass it on.
Today things seem very different with Barack Obama being the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. It took hard work an activism to overcome the hatred and prejudices. Tonight one of the many who have worked so hard for change will most likely receive an Oscar.
An American who truly deserves that honor and so many more.