Celebrity readers include Sonia Sanchez, Rev C.T. Vivian, Pastor Raphael G. Warnock and more

Today, New York Life Insurance Company, Black Entertainment Television, The National Black Arts Festival, The Performing Arts Program for Youth (PAPY) and the Historic Ebenezer Baptist Church are proud to introduce the Ossie Davis Endowment to the Atlanta community. The official Atlanta launch will take place on Monday, July 21, 7:00 pm at Ebenezer Baptist Church with a dramatic reading of the Ossie Davis play “The People of Clarendon County” to benefit the endowment. Celebrity readers include: Sonia Sanchez, Rev. C.T. Vivian, Jasmine Guy and Pastor Raphael G. Warnock. The event will be hosted by Rutherford and Laura Turner Seydel.

Through the art of drama, legendary actor, playwright, director and civil rights champion Ossie Davis gives life to a pivotal and little known chapter in Civil Rights history. We meet the Rev. Joseph DeLaine and other courageous African American parents in South Carolina, in their fight in the 1950s against racial inequality in education. They risked their lives to file the first legal challenge to segregation in the public schools. The play was written in celebration of the Supreme Court’s momentous decision outlawing school segregation. Clarendon County, a rural community in South Carolina, was the battleground of black sharecroppers, domestic workers, laborers, and clergymen who joined the NAACP to fight for better schools for black children. Their 1951 lawsuit, Briggs v. Elliott, was the first of five cases that led to the breakthrough 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education.

All proceeds from the Atlanta performance will benefit the Ossie Davis Endowment, which will support “Ossie Davis Scholars,” African American students who demonstrate a commitment to use their careers as vehicles of activism to assure equal justice and opportunity. The scholarship program will begin in 2009.

The reading is directed by Hilda Willis, producing artistic director of the Ossie Davis Endowment 10-city tour.

General admission tickets are $25 per person. VIP tickets are $50 per person and include an exclusive reading on Monday, July 21, 7 pm and a reception Saturday, July 19, 11 am at the Rialto Center for the Arts. To purchase tickets, visit the Bell Tower Book Store at Ebenezer Baptist Church, 407 Auburn Ave. To purchase tickets online visit: www.ossiedavisendowment.com. For more information call 404.825.0453.

For more information about the Ossie Davis Endowment including benefit readings tentatively scheduled for Birmingham; Cleveland; Detroit; Houston; Indianapolis; Little Rock; Los Angeles; Memphis; Montgomery; San Antonio and Washington, D.C, visit: www.ossiedavisendowment.com.