We Love You Queen Lady!
Henry T. Sampson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Sampson_%28inventor%29, film historian and American inventor who invented the cell phone wrote a book called, Blacks in Black and White: A Source Book on Black Films. Ruby Dee is featured in the heart of his book (pages 208 and 209). The rare book is a true “research-based” case study of black film production and black-casting companies between 1910 and 1950.
Henry T. Sampson, pays great detail to documentation about our Black-Cast Film history and genre which had 163 professional companies that operated and showed their films from city to city in 31 states in 430-theatres over the period and they frequented seating capacities of 26,853. These productions were not supported by instant social media but by communities in solidarity and they were connected with informative film synopses and biographical sketches covered by about 20 nationally recognized black newspapers (forerunners to NNPA.Org and NABJ.Org.)
All of this is to say that Ruby Dee had a complete understanding that African Americans in motion pictures, cinema or film today occupy a very different position — in comparison to [our] artistic past in creating film-productions, diverse story lines and even new stars for the American entertainment appetite.
When today, we remember Ruby Dee, in film alone… in just, American Gangster about Frank Lucas and appearing in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing and Jungle Fever it is nice — but very limiting. We give great respect to Spike and especially to his teaching book Five for Five and to solid brother- lead actors’ like Denzel but “respectfully to all…” just imagine for one moment…what could have gone through the mind of an elder like, Ruby Dee who led a rich and accomplished life watching not the current film industry, but our people in transition in creative industry simply having little understanding and or appreciation of our trade savvy, power, marketing and business past.
Ruby Dee was a very great, humble and noble woman.
I thank God for knowing her, being published by her in my early teens in her Glowchild children’s poetry anthology.
I was further privileged to know her family and be in her home and company on many occasions. This is one of my favorite photos. I took it in a moment that Ruby and Sonya Sanchez shared a greeting in Harlem when Woodie King Jr. was honoring her husband, the late Ossie Davis at George Faison’s theatre. I have not mentioned her stage credits or her credits as an author and civil rights activist and humanitarian. Suffice to say all/us/we… have great respect for her service to the nation as a defined-artist and for her compassion and sustained sensitivity with all of the lives that she touched. She need not be missed as much as she needs to be studied.
Just Click on Link Below
Poem Dedicated to Ruby Dee:
Make A New Day!
By W. Calvin Anderson, M.Ed.
i
am just
a poet
a Ruby & Ossie
creation “a glow-child”.
I am not a
cosmologist or
anthropologist.
but I gotta
tell the kids
“something” each and every morning.
We/they… often wonder
what
really is?
Is the world
material
or
idea?
Is it
Spirit
Science
Economy
Rhythm
Balance
Purpose
Art
Breathe
Poetry
Song
or
Dance?
Is it an
Environmental
Ode
To
The
humanities
climaxing with
a 60’s flower
power
or
thrust-fist nationalism
to
answer
to the
dark-side
of
hip-hip
or the end
of Columbus’
enterprise
when the street signs
turn
back into
Arawak
and God
Says it was
All just a fire drill
which by
the
way could
perhaps
change and
end
schooling
for
the planet in
a few hundred
years.
Is it material or idea?
Is
the right perspective concerned with
the blackness
covering the stars…
and the
blue
carrying birds and planes and clouds
or should we just paint and keep the the sun
shining?
Is it all about
money or heart for exchanging with people?
Is it the power or the magnetism
that fuels purpose to keep
God’s balancing Re-creation a-n-d
r e c r e a t i o n working
like
blood through an ancient body
that
we
don’t
understand?
Or, are
eden still… His malleable
material
or
renewable
idea?
What
is
this 24/7
morning
floor
for?
Make a new day
NO MATTER…
what
you think It
is! “k”
I love you Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee
Thanks to YouTube
