NORFOLK
Ruby Dee could've gone on about her acting roles - the one in "Roots: The Next Generations," or "Purlie Victorious." But she didn't come to Norfolk State University on Thursday for that. The legend visited because she wanted to talk with faculty and students about life.
"I truly believe this: We already come here for some reason," she said, her distinctive smoky voice enveloping an overflowing lecture hall. "If we're lucky, we'll have those parents who will help show us who we are."
Dee was invited to the area as a special guest for tonight's Urban League of Hampton Roads awards dinner. When she travels, Dee likes meeting with young people. Her booking agent, Randy
Forrest, is a Norfolk State graduate and Dee asked him to arrange a gathering.
He contacted Khadijah Miller, department head of interdisciplinary studies.
"I was very open to whatever she wanted to speak about," Miller said before the event. "I know she just has a wealth of experience, as an actress, as an activist and as a mother."
Dee's career extends back to the 1940s, but it seems as if in midstream. Younger folks know Dee from her intense Oscar-nominated performance last year in "American Gangster." Older fans remember her from "A Raisin in the Sun," and as an activist who worked alongside Martin Luther King Jr. And then, of course, for her 56-year marriage to actor Ossie Davis, their names "Ossie and Ruby" blending almost into one through the years. He died in 2005.
On Thursday, Dee spoke of the books she has written, politics and "the slap." One of the last questions was about the scene in "American Gangster," in which she smacked Denzel Washington, who played her drug kingpin son.
"Did you really slap him?" someone asked.
"Yes!"
She didn't want to romanticize the criminal nature of the film, so she wanted to do it. She was sending a message to the film's audience.
"That's what we have to tell each other," Dee said, "what we have to expect from each other. What we need to tell our children."
Denise Watson Batts, (757) 446-2504, or denise.batts@pilotonline.com
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