SISTER RUBY DEE IN HER OWN WORDS...

Ruby Dee, actress, civil rights champion, dead at 91

June 12, 2014, 2:45 PM EST

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 in her New Rochelle, New York, home on Wednesday night, a beloved figure in America and beyond.

As a sign of how influential Dee has been to generations of performers, she was thanked twice from the podium at this Sunday's Tony Awards — by six-time winner Audra McDonald and new Tony winner director Kenny Leon.

"She will be missed but never forgotten as she lives on in many of us," Leon said in a statement Thursday, noting that Dee's passing came just weeks after the death of Maya Angelou. "Maya and Ruby leave us only days apart — those two women with four letter names instructed us on how to live."

Dee's long career earned her an Emmy, a Grammy, two Screen Actors Guild awards, the NAACP Image Award, Kennedy Center Honors, the National Medal of Art, and the National Civil Rights Museum's Lifetime Achievement Award. She got an Oscar nomination at age 83 for best supporting actress for her role in the 2007 film "American Gangster."

Dee made her Broadway debut in the original production of "South Pacific" and in 1959 starred in the Broadway premiere of "A Raisin in the Sun," Lorraine Hansberry's landmark play about black frustration amid racial discrimination, opposite Sidney Poitier. Both reprised that role in the film two years later.

Davis and Dee, who met in 1945 when she auditioned for the Broadway play "Jeb," and married on a day off from another play in 1948, shared billing in 11 stage productions and five movies during long parallel careers.

But they were more than a performing couple. They were also activists who fought for civil rights, particularly for blacks. "We used the arts as part of our struggle," she said in 2006.

Along with film, stage and television, their richly honored careers extended to a radio show, "The Ossie Davis andRuby Dee Story Hour," that featutred a mix of black themes. Davis directed one of their joint film appearances, "Countdown at Kusini" (1976).

As young performers, they participated in the growing movement for social and racial justice in the United States. They were friends with barrier-breaking baseball star Jackie Robinson and his wife, Rachel — Dee played her, opposite Robinson himself, in the 1950 movie, "The Jackie Robinson Story" — and with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcom X. Both spoke at both the funerals for King and Malcom X.

Their activism never waned. They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary by helping to launch the 30th-anniversary celebration of the University of Iowa Black Action Theatre and in 1999, were arrested protesting the shooting death of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed African immigrant, by New York City police.

In 1998, the pair also released a dual autobiography, "With Ossie and Ruby: In This Life Together."

Dee and Davis, who died in 2005, were celebrated as national treasures when they received the National Medal of Arts in 1995 and got a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Screen Actors Guild in 2000. In 2004, she and Davis received Kennedy Center Honors. Another honor came in 2007 when the recording of their memoir won a Grammy for best spoken word album.

Born Ruby Ann Wallace in Cleveland, Dee moved to Harlem with her family as an infant. She attended her first protests as a child, joining picket lines to rail against discriminatory hiring practices.

She graduated from a highly competitive high school and enrolled in college but longed to act.

"I wanted to be an actor but the chances for success did not look promising," she wrote in their joint autobiography.

But in 1940 she got a part in a Harlem production of a new play, "On Strivers Row," which she later called "one giant step" to becoming a person and a performer.

In 1965, she became the first black woman to play lead roles at the American Shakespeare Festival. She won an Obie Award for the title role in Athol Fugard's "Boesman and Lena" and a Drama Desk Award for her role in "Wedding Band."

On television, Dee was a leading cast member on the soap operas "Guiding Light" and "Peyton Place," a rare sight for a black actress in the 1950s and 60s. As she aged, her career did not ebb. Dee was the voice of wisdom and reason as Mother Sister in Spike Lee's 1989 film, "Do the Right Thing," alongside her husband. She won an Emmy as supporting actress in a miniseries or special for 1990's "Decoration Day."

Most recently, Dee performed her one-woman stage show, "My One Good Nerve: A Visit With Ruby Dee," in theaters across the country. The show was a compilation of some of the short stories, humor and poetry in her book of the same title.

She is survived by three children: Nora, Hasna and Guy, and seven grandchildren. Her family and friends surrounded her when she died, Nora Davis Day said.

"We have had her for so long and we loved her so much," Day told The Associated Press. "We gave her our permission to set sail. She opened her eyes, closed her eyes and away she went."