Ossie Davis Endowment Launched at 1199SEIU Headquarters

1199SEIU’s Bread and Roses Project, together with a host of luminaries, launched the Ossie Davis Endowment on February 29 at the Union’s Manhattan headquarters. Davis, a beloved actor, director, poet, playwright, writer, and activist, passed away in February 2005.

 

Among the participants at the event were artist-activist Harry Belafonte, actor Louis Gossett Jr., actor Alan Alda, singer Odetta and former Riverside pastor the Rev. James Forbes.

 

“It is not possible to write the history of 1199SEIU without including the enormous contributions of Ossie Davis,” says Union President George Gresham. He noted at the endowment event that Davis and his wife, Ruby Dee, had participated in countless Union campaigns and cultural events. Gresham presented a check from 1199SEIU for $25,000.

 

Featured at the event was the reading of “The People of Clarendon County,” a short play written by Davis in 1955 to mark the Brown v Board of Education Supreme Court ruling, which outlawed racial segregation in U.S. public schools. The play, first performed in 1955 by Davis, Dee and Sidney Poitier, was largely forgotten until it was unearthed in 2004 by journalist Alice Bernstein, who also spoke at the launching.

 

The Ossie Davis Endowment was created to assist African American students who demonstrate a commitment to applying their careers as vehicles to assure equal justice and opportunity. It will be administered by the United Negro College Fund. Its goal is to raise $1 million per year for five years.

 

When that goal is achieved, the endowment will award full four-year scholarships. Partial scholarships will be available beginning this fall.

For further information or to make a tax-deductible contribution, log onto www.OssieDavisEndowment.com or call 212-491-9118.