Edelman on equal education

Policies and institutions that neglect youth are creating a cradle-to-prison pipeline that threatens to swallow a generation and weaken the nation, said children’s advocate Marian Wright Edelman.

“The most dangerous place for a child to grow up today is at the intersection of race and poverty,” said Edelman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund. “Incarceration is becoming the new apartheid, especially for poor children and children of color as the fodder.”

Photo: Cheryl Mowczan

Marian Wright Edelman is the founder and president of the Children's Defense Fund.

Edelman, who has been an advocate for the poor and children for more than 40 years, spoke Tuesday at Hendricks Chapel.

Edelman’s roots in civil rights began in law in the 1960s, when she became the first black woman admitted to the Mississippi bar. She served as counsel to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during his Poor People’s Campaign. If King was alive today, he would want to reignite the campaign to focus on the needs of the poor, she said.

“The failure to act now will reverse the hard-earned racial and social progress that Dr. King died and sacrificed for,” Edelman said.

The juvenile justice system is in dire need of reform, especially in New York state where black youths are 32 times more likely than whites to be in custody, Edelman said.

Black boys born in 2001 have a 1 in 3 chance of going to prison, and Latino boys have a 1 in 7 chance, Edelman said, quoting Justice Department data.

Those stark statistics illustrate a crisis for African-American and Latino communities, Edelman said. But those numbers also undermine the entire country, and add up to “a national catastrophe” that locks former inmates out of voting booths and jobs, she said.

Equal access to quality education is essential to leveling the playing field for children, Edelman said.

“The real civil rights front for the next decade is education,” she said. “And we need the best people to go into teaching. Children need positive people who believe in them.”

America has some of the worst world rates of teen pregnancy, child poverty and gun violence against children. Last year, more than 3,000 children died from gun violence.

“I often wonder where the anti-war movement to protect our children at home is,” Edelman said. 

Although some children live in desperate conditions, adults can raise their voices to advocate for children, Edelman said. She urged those in attendance to call for the closure of the state’s juvenile jails, and to hold politicians accountable for funding children’s needs.

“They all kiss babies, but when they get in these rooms and do their budgets, babies get lost,” she said. “Our failure to invest in all of our children before they get sick, drop out of school, and get into trouble is morally indefensible.”