Author Description

Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee are legendary stars of the American stage, television, and film, cherished not merely for their gifts as actors but also for their life-long commitment to human rights, family values, and the black community. Now, in a joint memoir that celebrates half a century of successful marriage, they look back on the extraordinary careers that earned each a Presidential Medal for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts. As they reminisce in alternating chapters, Ossie and Ruby offer a vivid picture of the twentieth-century African-American experience, both in the rural South and the urban North. For Ossie and Ruby, stardom and social responsibility were inseparable, so along with their theatrical stories of Broadway and Hollywood, where black actors fought to escape racial stereotypes, they offer an insider's chronicle of political commitment that drew the wrath of Senator Joe McCarthy and, later, the friendship of both Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X. And, perhaps most important to them, here is the story of their private lives and the family whose love and security more than repaid the sacrifices they made.