Ruby Dandridge

Reading up on Dorothy Dandridge's life, I find myself drawn to her mother, Ruby Dandridge. Five months before Dorothy is born, Ruby leaves her husband, Cyril Dandridge, and moves in with her "companion," Geneva Williams. This was 1922! A black woman divorcing her husband was almost unheard of at the time and not to mention the fact that Ruby was also pregnant with Dorothy. But that's exactly what she does. She chooses not only to survive but to thrive in the repressed society of the 1920’s. I can’t even imagine what that must have been like for Ruby.