Sometimes we forget Ruby Dee was born in Cleveland, Ohio. Say “Karamu House” and you know Ruby Dee. Ruby and Harlem paired perfectly like Ruby and Ossie. Harlem was where the baby girl grew up. Or we know Ruby from her Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn window in Spike Lee’s DO THE RIGHT THING.

But Ruby was a Cleveland girl. She didn’t forget that. So much so, she was a writer on the film UPTIGHT, based on the novel, The Informer, by Liam O’Flaherty. Filmed in Cleveland’s Hugh neighborhood by Jules Dasian Did you know that?

Ruby was a writer. She brought Zora Neale Hurston (ZORA IS MY NAME to PBS videotaping her performance on the Howard University campus in Washington, DC – where Zora attended college. It seems Ruby was about location, location, location. She was always on the scene in so many places. But “Uptight” is where Ruby was from.

I will miss seeing Ruby on the scene. It’s on us to show up now.

…it has become our turn to carry the lantern as well as the road map that may help lead us all, in the words of W.E.B DuBois, to ‘life lit by some large vision of goodness, beauty, and truth.’
Ruby Dee

Here is a trailer for “Life’s Essentials with Ruby Dee,” a documentary in progress about the great artist, activist, woman Ruby Dee.