Back talk with Ruby Dee.

For more than 60 years, Ruby Dee has brought dignity and grace to the characters she's portrayed on stage, in film, and on television. Her accomplishments within her craft and as an activist make her one of the most respected African American actresses. And while she stands tall on the body of work she's accumulated over her lifetime, it was her long-time partnership with late husband Ossie Davis that the country will remember most.

Ossie and Ruby met as east members on the set of Jeb in 1946 and married two years later. It was Ossie's first Broadway role, but Buby had been showing off her stage talents for quite some time. Born Ruby Ann Wallace in Cleveland, she was a baby when her father and mother moved to Harlem. She joined the American Negro Theater as a teenager and made her Broadway debut at 19.

In February, Ruby, 80, suffered a devastating loss when her husband of 56 years passed away while working on a film in Florida. BLACK ENTERPRISE caught up with her about a week after the funeral. She remains strong in spirit, determined to move forward with her work and her life, and committed to the legacy she shared with her beloved Ossie.

You and your husband were always adamant about actors and artists understanding the business side of their craft. All artists, actors, musicians, and dancers should take a business course so they can have greater control over the financial aspects of earning a living doing what they love to do. The allegiance to the emotional side of it can leave you very desperate and very broke.

Do more artists today have that sense of business? [Acting is] a business so we can't be naive enough to think, "Oh, we're just artists and somebody else will take care of the business." We've seen enough of those people who were gifted but had no business accruements and were taken advantage of.

It seems as if many of today's hip-hop artists are determined not to let that happen to them. I really like hip-hop and what it's trying to do. What I hear is young people trying to talk a language that "massa" can't understand. They're trying to stay two steps ahead by having a language that says something different. We've been doing that since slavery.

What will be your husband's legacy? It's hard to say, but I know that he was a deeply caring man. He cared a whole lot about Africa and what's happening over there. He cared so much about us as black people because he felt we have an opportunity to help make things right in the whole world like no other victims of oppression [can]. He had a legacy of caring.

What will you miss most about your husband? I'll miss talking to him in the mornings. We'd go off and we'd read the paper. He read so much. We talked about the times, and the people, and the affairs that we were going to or had been to.

What was his position on the political climate? [That] we have to get back to a real two-party political system. We have to have choices. I think he believed in something approaching a Christian way of living. My husband would sometimes go in his room and take out all of his things and put them in a box. I would say, "What is this?" and he'd say, "Oh, I don't think I need this anymore." And it would be something that we got maybe the year before. He wasn't a "thing" person, and sometimes that bothered me.

Was he Christ-like? No, I'd say more like Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. didn't want to buy a finer house. I think he told Coretta, "It wouldn't look right in the movement if we bought a finer house." And Ossie was a lot like that. He felt we had an awful lot that we didn't need. He was always asking, "Do we need it?"

Is it upsetting to talk about Ossie so soon after his death? It doesn't bother me at all because we're going to have to start asking it more and more in the world: "Do we need it?" And having so much when millions and millions of people have so little--that was an area that was constantly with him. That's what I'm going to miss, and the fact that he was joyous in his pursuit of life. He loved people.

Speaking of people, what did your relationship with Malcolm X mean to both of you? We had been following Malcolm since he came on the scene. My brother had been one of his earliest disciples and neighbors. My brother introduced us. But Malcolm was one of the people [about whom] Ossie said, "The good folks keep a comin'." Like he [wrote in his play Purlie Victorious], "Good people are bound to pop up from time to time for all of our sakes." Ossie recognized Malcolm as one of those spirits who pop up with rescue in mind. We latched on to Malcolm and King. And anything they wanted Ossie to do, he was there for them. He served those people he thought were on the rescue track.

And are you planning to retire any time soon? [Not as long as] I can huff and puff. I have a lot that I'm trying to get produced. I have a company, you know. We have a number of things that Ossie and I started and I'm expecting to continue and to move forward with some of his ideas.