Celebrated actress Ruby Dee dead at 91

NEW ROCHELLE, N.Y., June 12 (UPI) -- Ruby Dee died Wednesday at age 91.

New York Daily News confirms she died of natural causes at her home in New Rochelle, N.Y.

The celebrated actress had a decades-long career that began on Broadway in the 1940s. She landed her first film role in 1946, and came to fame for The Jackie Robinson Story in 1950. She starred opposite Sidney Poitier in A Raisin in the Sun in 1961, and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress in 2007 for American Gangster.

In addition to being actors, Dee and husband Ossie Davis were political activists. Both were were awarded the Lifetime Achievement Freedom Award at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tenn., in 2005. Davis, who died that year, was awarded the honor posthumously.