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• "A visit with Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee"
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Actress and activist tells about Malcolm X's discreet presence during the 1963 March on Washington. (1:45)
 

Tavis: As we close out our week here at the studios of WNET in New York City, I'm honored to welcome the legendary Ruby Dee to this program. Now I could spend the rest of this program detailing her remarkable career as an actress, writer and civil rights activist, but let me just highlight a few of her many accomplishments.

Among her many notable film roles are classics like "A Raisin in the Sun," "Roots," "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" and, of course, "Do the Right Thing" with Spike Lee. In 1948, she met and married the late great Ossie Davis. The two would go on to collaborate on so many projects including, as I mentioned at the outset, serving as Master and Mistress of Ceremonies at the 1963 march that gave us Dr. King's most famous speech.

She's still going strong and, I might add, looking good. On November 2, you can catch her alongside Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe in the most anticipated film of the fall, "American Gangster." It is my honor, Ms. Ruby Dee, to have you on the program.

Ruby Dee: Well, I can't believe that I'm sitting here watching you in the studio.

Tavis: You thought I wasn't going to come to New York and not invite you to come on the program?

Dee: (Laughter) Yes, because I'm watching you all the time at night, you know. My kids say, "Mom, please, we can get it on some kind of electric thing, you know." I could watch you some time in the daytime.

Tavis: They're trying to get you a TiVo and you just stay up late at night to watch it.

Dee: Yes. You know, Spike gave me all that kind of equipment, but I'm still having to catch up with the buttons and things. My youngest daughter, she relieved me of it. They know all about these things and she told me she'd teach me about it.

Tavis: How to do it. I'm just glad you watch however you watch.

Dee: Oh, goodness.

Tavis: It's an honor to have you here. I only have thirty minutes. I can't do justice to your work in thirty minutes. I wonder if you might indulge me just to throw some things at you and let you tell me about this journey you been on.

Dee: Okay.

Tavis: In no particular order, what must it have been like with your late great husband, Ossie Davis, to be in charge of the program at the 1963 March on Washington which, of course, gave us that "I Have a Dream" speech? You guys ran the program that day.

Dee: Yes. But the most remarkable thing about that day was Malcolm coming to our hotel room. He just came in by himself. We were waiting to go downstairs, I guess, as part of the wait. We were amazed to see him because nobody told us he was coming and so on and so forth.

But he wanted Ossie to let it be known to the proper people that he was there and, should they need his help or anything that he could do, he would be discreet. Discreet is the word he used. He wanted us to let somebody in that march know that he was there.

That's one of the things I remember about that more than anything. He said, other than that, he doesn't want his presence known, he doesn't want to speak, he doesn't want any attention, but he didn't want anything to go down that shouldn't.

Tavis: See, that's amazing to me because, of course, I never heard this story before because it's your story in your private hotel room. But we think of that day, as I mentioned, as Dr. King's grandest day, "I Have a Dream," and here Malcolm X was in the city and came to your hotel room on the day of Dr. King's event to tell you all he was there.

Dee: And to make sure that Ossie knew that he was there and how to get in touch with him. He whispered it in his ear. I didn't even hear where he told him how to get in touch with him.

Tavis: Wow. Speaking of Malcolm X and Ossie Davis, your husband was the only person to speak at both Malcolm's funeral and Martin's funeral. He spoke at both of them.

Dee: Oh, yeah. I can't get over it. Also, we were privy to the fact that the death word was out because my brother, who was one of his first disciples - as a matter of fact, my brother Edward introduced us to Malcolm. He introduced us to the whole movement.

We had a party for Malcolm because of my brother. Everybody we knew, Sidney and Harry and my friend Juanita and so many people came to our little house in Mount Vernon to meet Malcolm. I was so excited. My first listening to Malcolm speak and I didn't even know it was Malcolm when he was speaking because he was so young in the first place and he talked such a long time (laughter).

When I first met him, I shook hands and I said, "Oh, you're Malcolm. You know you kept saying the same thing over and over." I don't know why I said that (laughter). He had that crooked little grin, you know, where the corner of his mouth goes up and down and he said, "Well, you know, you have to say things over and over before people get the message." (Laughter). I remember that, and how dare I say that?

Tavis: To Malcolm X, yeah.

Dee: It was my brother who let us know the night before the killing. He followed Malcolm everywhere. As a matter of fact, they lived in the same neighborhood. I think he had something to do with his finding his house. My brother was sort of like one of those people in the pocket, I call it. You know, you want something, you just reach in your pocket. He warned us not to go to that meeting in the morning at the ballroom.

Tavis: The Audubon Ballroom.

Dee: Yeah, the Audubon Ballroom. We had a meeting to go to. We promised Lerone Bennett we were going to be at this program about having to do with city history and so forth. We wanted to go so much, but we didn't want to disappoint Lerone, so we said we'd go there and then we would immediately catch up with Malcolm and see if we could get there in time.

Tavis: It never happened, obviously.

Dee: Never met. We went to my mother's house and the television was on. I don't think we listened to the radio because what came on the television was a ballet dance, lovely girls doing a ballet dance. Then the announcement and talk about Malcolm. I thought, "My, what a juxtaposition."

Tavis: You mentioned earlier in this conversation, and this is the case when you talk to an iconic figure like yourself, you said, "Sidney" and then you said, "Harry." Of course, we know you're talking about Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte who were personal friends of yours.

But take me back to your early stages. You actually studied. You were in school together in the ensemble. You and Sidney and Harry. Take me back to those days at the American Negro Theater.

Dee: Oh, yes, yes. I was there before them. You know, they were sort of like my younger brothers (laughter). Yes, it was a strange time listening to Harry singing with the radio going and he'd be singing and folks saying, "Oh, Harry, come on." (Laughter). I remember that so clearly because we wanted him to stop singing and he was doing his thing, but this was before he turned professional.

Tavis: It worked out though, didn't it?

Dee: Yes, he worked out.

Tavis: Harry got the last laugh on that (laughter).

Dee: We were talking and wanted to do other things. You know, we'd go to the American Negro Theater on 135th Street in the library. You know, where the Schaumburg is now. That's because the theater was down in that basement. It's where life began for me, you know, as an actor. I'd usually see Fred and Sidney. They'd be talking in the back of the theater. I didn't know who Sidney was.

My first recollection was seeing Fred O'Neal talking to Harry. I later surmised that he was talking to him about his accent (laughter). But when I think of it, what a remarkable transition not only in terms of language in the way he spoke, but his whole address of the business of acting, and what an arresting personality he was and is, you know.

Oh, those were the days. Starting off with a six cents treasury and so many people including Hilda Sims - you probably didn't know her - and Clarice Taylor. She was the only one in the group who had a job (laughter). She worked in the post office. She had a job, so we thought of Clarice as having money.

Oh, God, it was some time. Also occasionally, the people with money would buy dinner for everybody. Eventually, we began to bit by bit attract teachers through Abram Hill and Fred O'Neal and people still alive now like Gertrude Jeanette was part of that and, oh, so many.

Tavis: What do you make of the fact that when you say, "Oh, so many," here's a class with Ruby Dee, this American Negro ensemble, with you and Ossie Davis and Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier -

Dee: - and Bill Green was with it.

Tavis: What do you make of the fact that all you all were just kids studying together and every one of you, at least those I've just listed, end up becoming not just good actors and not even just great actors, but all of you went on to become iconic figures?

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.

That's one of the things that I learned as I grow older, you know. I don't have time to say, "Oh, not me. Who am I?" It's like that story, you know, if you're too old to fight, then just walk back there and pick up one of them children and walk as far as you can to give it to somebody else. Your assignment is never through, so don't use that as an excuse.

If you're old, if you're crippled like I think about revolutionaries, don't just think you can't be in the fight just because you're old. You know, we got to hit the bricks, you know. We got to hit it. We'll pick up our crutches and our medications and hit the bricks (laughter). You know what I mean? So that's what I've learned from those times and those people.

Tavis: I could listen to you talk all day long. I hear the calling that you and Ossie Davis responded to, but as actors, what made you do that? I mean, there were a lot of folk of that era and certainly a lot of folk of this era who are being told that, as an actor, you don't become an activist. You want to work, you don't want to offend anybody, you don't want to take risks, you don't want to be on the front line.

For you and Ossie, there was never ever, it seems to me at least, any doubt about the fact that you weren't just actors. You were citizens, you were Black. All the stuff that you have done all these years, you've done sort of unapologetically and almost like with no thought to the negative impact that it might have on your career.

Dee: Well, you know, Tavis, I believe in everything having to do with the arts. As a matter of fact, I compare this with being a musician. You know, we learn notes and we learn the scale and we learn songs, and a dancer has steps and the choreography and so forth.

You learn about the composers when you're a musician and the dancers and the writers. You have certain disciplines in each of these art forms. But as an actor, your schooling, your text, is the whole of life and everybody and everything in it.

That's the one thing about this particular branch of the arts that I've come to discover. Not that drummers don't feel this same way, when I'm thinking about Max Roach and I could tell you some things that we don't bring the whole of life into whatever we do. But the whole of life is what concerns the artist and also the whole art of life. I don't know how I got off on that.

Tavis: You got off on it because I asked you a question that you gave me a brilliant answer to that I've never heard before. That's how you got off on it.

Dee: The art of becoming anybody and anybody living through you is like lending yourself to this astonishing human experience. It's an incredible set of circumstances, this thing we call being human. Being a human being is something we shall never stop defining and that's why the arts are so important. They help us to see and understand and begin to understand the magnificence of being a human being.

I find myself having to say that when, as Lorraine Hansberry says, "How dare you, despairing ones, think that only you know the truth? How dare you be a human being and despair?" As far as we encompass everything, everybody, our comprehension is even deeper than we know or else we couldn't invent something we weren't capable of dreaming up.

We have the equipment to be an Einstein or to be a Dubois. That's our equipment. That's our territory. We come with it and who are we to deny that? We're so magnificent that we don't even know it. We don't even know how magnificent we are (laughter). You understand what I mean?

Tavis: (Laughter) I absolutely understand.

Dee: How dare we, you know, look down our noses at anybody else and indeed at our ourselves. We don't even have enough time to discover how extraordinary we are. That's one thing I love about this business of acting. You can keep peeling away levels and levels and levels and you never get to the end because whatever bottom you think you've reached, all you've done is opened a whole new kettle of fish.

Tavis: I assume, then, that must be why you still work. Although you have earned your laurels, you keep working.

Dee: Well, yes. I work because I don't even like the word retirement (laughter).

Tavis: (Laughter) You don't like the word, let alone what it stands for.

Dee: I don't want to tell myself, my structure, my who I am and all the things that I haven't even yet discovered about even being human that I'm through now, I'm tired, I'm going to retire because I'm afraid something in me will listen (laughter) and make it possible for me to retire.

Tavis: (Laughter) Your DNA may pay attention to you.

Dee: I have to encourage whatever the thing that is in me that I don't know what it's about yet. I have to encourage that thing to, you know, do your thing and I'll be here so you can work through me as long as you want to.

Tavis: See, now that's why I love you so much. This is why I love you so much.

Dee: Also, each age like we're getting older now, it's like every time you get to what you think is the ultimate, it's peeling the paper off this - what's this prize under the thing in the Cracker Jack box? You're going to peel that thing back and, oh, a new door is going to open up to you and you're going to peel that thing open and look down there and see a whole new - that's what I'm finding out in my old age. I don't say "old age." I say "in the youth of my seniorhood" (laughter).

Tavis: The youth of your seniorhood (laughter).

Dee: Yes.

Tavis: How do you do this every day? How do you have this attitude every day? How do you have this positive outlook every day post-Ossie?

Dee: Well, I think about Ossie. He was never a griever. He had us all laughing at his mother's funeral. Not ha-ha laughing, but we couldn't cry because he was talking to us about his mother and we had to smile. There was something about her whole life that we were enjoying. We weren't thinking about the death. One thing he used to say all the time - when he came to the hospital to see anyone or he goes to a funeral, he wasn't a mourner.

If you're expecting for somebody to come and to cry with you, he was the wrong person because he was going to see something and you would have to move away from the fear. One thing he used to say - I don't know whether he said he got this from Nipsy or what. He walked into our friend Alonzo's funeral and he looked down at Alonzo and he said, "Oh, boy" and he smiled. He said, "Oh, boy" and that impressed me.

One of the things he was fond of saying if I'd start worrying about something, he'd say, "Well, we do this and we do that." I should have known something was peculiar about Ossie because sometimes we'd have things hard and I'd borrow money maybe from my father or my mother maybe to get us through something. Before I know, he had lent the money that I'd borrowed to somebody else (laughter).

That's just a small example of the kind of mentality he had. He could have on two socks that matched or not. When I met him, he looked like, oh. But I later came to understand that and I understood then what richness was.

He always used to say to me about the kids when they started crying, "Well, what can we do to fix that? Well, suppose we do that?" And if they're still crying, he'd say, "Well, if you can't fix it, you just got to down it and get from around it."

Tavis: Down it and get from around it.

Dee: Down it and get from around it. That was his favorite saying.

Tavis: I regret that this half hour has come to a close so quickly. But you see why, as I said at the top of this show, there was no way in the world I was going to come to New York this week and not spend some time with Ruby Dee. Still busy, plays Denzel's momma in the film that everybody is waiting to see, Denzel and Russell Crowe, in "American Gangster."

Miss Ruby Dee is in it and what an honor to have you here. When I come back to New York again or whenever you're in Los Angeles again, we got to continue this conversation.

Dee: Oh, yes.

Tavis: I love you and there ain't nothing you can do about that.

Dee: Oh, thank you.

Tavis: That's our show for tonight. We wrap up this week in New York. I've enjoyed it. My thanks to everyone here at WNET, Channel 13, for their hospitality and continued support.