So I’m reading Jonathan Kozol’s Letters to a Young Teacher   and it’s absolutely amazing . . . but this one chapter in particular, about the reversals of the gains made during the civil rights era, really struck me, and I knew I’d found my Sunday fodder . . . here are a few quotes:

         The percentage of black children who now go to integrated public schools has fallen to its lowest level since the death of Dr. King in 1968. In New York and California, seven out of every eight black students presently attend a segregated school. (pg. 77)

[One African-American teacher in New York] “refused to give his kids a set of lesson plans he’d been assigned for what he called “The Famous [Selma] March Curriculum.” Instead, he said he’d posted on his classroom walls all the stuff that he could find about the racist education system in which he was working now.
                 “You see,” he said, “to the very poor black children that I teach . . . , it doesn’t matter much what bridge you may have stood on thirty years ago. They want to know what bridge you stand on now.” (pg. 83)

 I am beginning to believe that I was born for just this thing, to find that bridge and stand, and walk, and shout until I can’t shout anymore for justice for these kids.

I pray that God will point my feet in that direction.