Ruby Greene

Greene was born in Savannah, Georgia, the daughter of Edward Greene and Amanda Greene. She moved to New York City with her divorced mother and younger sisters in 1916, part of the Great Migration. She and her sisters spent about five years living at the Good Samaritan Orphan Home in Newark, New Jersey, because their mother could not support them. She began singing at the orphanage, and learned to play piano. In 1930, after she had some professional experience as a singer, she enrolled at the Institute of Musical Art, where she earned a diploma in 1933. == Career ==

Greene became contralto soloist in the Saint Mark's Methodist Episcopal Choir in Harlem in 1924. At Carnegie Hall in 1926, she was awarded three medals at a competition held by the New York Music Week Association. She also sang at the annual meeting of the National Association of Negro Musicians in 1926. In 1928, she sang with the Hall Johnson Choir. Miss Frankye A. Dixon, a prominent Harlem concert artist and classical pianist often accompanied Ruby Green at the piano. In the 1930s, she sang with the Eva Jessye Choir, and through Jessye, became acquainted with Ira Gershwin and his wife. and was on Broadway again from 1968 to 1970, as James Earl Jones's mother in The Great White Hope. She had a few small television roles in the 1970s. == Broadway credits ==

Greene appeared in small roles and ensemble parts in six shows on Broadway, spanning thirty years: • The Pirate (1942) • Porgy and Bess (1953, 1961) • The Desert Song (1973) == Personal life and legacy ==

Ruby Green married Stephen R. "Dutch" Aspinall in 1942; he died in 1973, and her later years were spent with her companion Mary J. Johnson. She died from cancer in 2002, aged 96, in Philadelphia. Her grave is with her husband's, at the Long Island National Cemetery in Farmingdale, New York. after it was published in ''Harper's Magazine in 1929. The image was reproduced on the cover of the Journal of the American Medical Association'' in March 2001. The original painting hangs in the Norton Museum of Art in Palm Beach, Florida, where it is a longtime favorite of local museum-goers. "She's just among the privileged characters the public will not stand to see replaced," noted a Norton curator in 1964. == References ==