More Roads to Travel

The Harvard Gazette reports on Marian Wright Edelman's Askwith Forum.

Marian Wright Edelman has known dark days in her lifelong quest to help poor and minority children. In 1968, she went into Washington, D.C., schools to ask young African Americans to think of the future and stop rioting after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

“I am still haunted by the experience when one child looked me in the eye and said, ‘Lady, what future? I ain’t got nothing to lose.’ ”

Despite all the efforts of the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) that she founded in 1973, Edelman said there is even more reason today to be alarmed at the grim landscape facing many African-American and Latino children, with 80 percent reaching high school without reading proficiency. ... Read the full article in the Harvard Gazette.