Book with Ossie Davis play featured at African American Museum
Special to the Philadelphia Sun
The African American Museum in Philadelphia (AAMP), 701 Arch Street, will host an author book signing event, free with museum admission, on Saturday, February 16th at 2 PM. Journalist and Aesthetic Realism Associate Alice Bernstein, speaks about the new book from Third World Press which she edited: The People of Clarendon County—A Play by Ossie Davis, with Photographs and Historical Documents, and Essays on the Education That Can End Racism. That education is Aesthetic Realism, founded in 1941 by the philosopher Eli Siegel.

The People of Clarendon County is a seminal work by Ossie Davis, one of America’s most revered and beloved actors and activists. This short play is about a little known chapter in civil rights history. It chronicles the courage of black parents in rural Clarendon County, South Carolina—sharecroppers, domestic workers, laborers, and clergymen—who risked everything to fight for equal schools for their children. Their 1951 lawsuit Briggs v. Elliott, was later combined by the NAACP with other cases as Brown v. Board of Education—and led to the historic 1954 Supreme Court ruling which outlawed segregation in public schools.

The play was performed only once, in 1955, at union Local 1199, the Bread and Roses cultural project in New York City, by the young actors Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and Sidney Poitier. It has never been published—until now—the result of Bernstein’s research and efforts! History will come alive at AAMP as drama students from New Freedom Theatre, under the direction of Diane Leslie, perform an excerpt from this play. And some of the original participants from Clarendon County, now residing in Pennsylvania, will be introduced to the audience!

Alice Bernstein will tell of conversations with Ossie Davis in 2004 and how, with his encouragement, this book came to be. The book includes documents and photographs by and about the real people of Clarendon County who appear as characters in the play, and essays by authorities on Aesthetic Realism which explain the cause of and answer to racism. As Monique Michael, an elementary school educator and contributor to this book, presents a lesson about birds, people will experience the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method. The audience can imagine themselves as first graders, and see how, through this interactive lesson, children learn successfully and become kinder to people different from themselves.

The event will announce the launching of the Campaign for the Ossie Davis Endowment which supports Ossie Davis Scholars, African American college students charged with continuing his life of artistic activism through their educational and professional choices.
A book signing will follow.

About this book, Ruby Dee, distinguished actress, current Academy Award Nominee, and the wife of Ossie Davis, wrote:
“It moved my husband to think that fifty years later, school children might learn about history by reading or acting in his play. In addition, Alice’s book will also inform people about the success of the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method in enabling children to learn every subject, and ending prejudice in the classroom.”

Ossie Davis was an award-winning actor, director, producer and Civil Rights activist who worked closely with Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. He wrote and starred in the Broadway hit Purlie Victorious, later made into the musical Purlie, and is the author of numerous teleplays and books, including several for young people. He appeared countless times on radio and television. Mr. Davis passed away in 2005. A posthumous collection of speeches and essays, “Life Lit by Some Large Vision,” was published in 2006 (Atria Books), with Editorial Notes and a Foreword by Ruby Dee.

Alice Bernstein’s articles appear nationwide—often here in the Philadelphia Sun—and in the anthology Aesthetic Realism and the Answer to Racism. She is a scholar and contributing writer to African American National Biography edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham (Oxford University Press, 2008), “the largest narrative collection of black lives ever assembled in our nation’s history.” Ms. Bernstein is at work on “The Force of Ethics in Civil Rights,” an oral history project and documentary of interviews with unsung heroes.

Third World Press, the publisher of The People of Clarendon County, has been dedicated to publishing culturally progressive and politically insightful works of fiction and non-fiction since 1967 (www.thirdworldpressinc.com). For more information about this book event, you may call the African American Museum in Philadelphia at (215) 574-0380 or visit www.aampmuseum.org