In 2017 Hurricanes Irma and Maria caused widespread devastation across Puerto Rico, leaving children especially vulnerable—but the sad reality is Puerto Rican children were some of the most at risk in America long before the storm. Nearly 6 in 10 children in Puerto Rico live in poverty, a rate almost twice as high as New Mexico and Mississippi, the states with the highest poverty rates. More than one-third of households with children in Puerto Rico receive nutrition assistance benefits and rely on that safety net to help keep hunger at bay. In the wake of Hurricane Maria this lifeline has...

“If the justice system does not change incarceration will continue to be as arbitrary as a game of eeny, meeny, miny, mo, with black kids and black men hoping to avoid being ‘IT.’” Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Mo is the title of this series of paintings by Nashville native Omari Booker, a visual artist who has spent a lot of time thinking about race and mass incarceration in America. He explains that many people may not realize the familiar children’s rhyme the title is based on (eeny, meeny, miny, mo, catch a tiger by the toe, if he hollers let him go …) has racially charged origins: traditional 19th...

When 26-year-old Stockton, California councilmember Michael Tubbs was elected in 2016 as Stockton’s first Black mayor, its youngest mayor ever, and the youngest mayor in U.S. history of a city with a population of at least 100,000, he had a mission to make positive change in his hometown. Last year the city made progress towards a key goal: reducing gun violence. Stockton police reported 40 percent fewer homicides and 31 percent fewer shootings between 2017 and 2018 and said increased police resources and community involvement are making a difference. Mayor Tubbs shared his thanks in a social...

When Lucy Durr married Sheldon Hackney in 1957, the custom alterations to her beautiful gown were done for her by a family friend–Mrs. Rosa Parks. This wonderful detail opens a small window into my dear friend and former Children’s Defense Fund board and volunteer staff member Lucy Durr Hackney’s extraordinary life. Lucy, who passed away last October at age 81, was the daughter of civil rights activists Virginia and Clifford Durr and niece of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black. She followed her family’s staunch commitment to social justice and led a selfless life of loving service and...

All during the Christmas season, as millions celebrate a poor, homeless child Christians call Savior, I think about the irony of some political leaders proposing (and citizens permitting) policies that would result in millions more children becoming destitute, homeless, and hungry and being detained and cruelly separated from their parents at our borders. There are 12.8 million children living in poverty in our nation. Children are the poorest Americans and the younger they are the poorer they are. Nearly one in five children live in families who don’t always have enough to eat. Children are...

“Up until I was 16 years old and a senior in high school, I did the same thing my friends did. We drove through the Black side of town throwing pears at Black guys and yelling racial epithets. We were the White oppressors. I was the White oppressor.” My dear friend Dr. John Maguire readily admitted his childhood in Montgomery, Alabama and Jacksonville, Florida didn’t make him a likely champion of racial equality. But when he passed away recently at age 86, John—the president emeritus of Claremont Graduate University, former president of the State University of New York (SUNY) Old Westbury,...

When I was a child, my father kept an editorial cartoon pinned up in the vestibule of our church that made a deep impression on me I have never forgotten. It was a black and white drawing by the Pulitzer Prize-winning artist Herblock that was originally published in the Washington Post in October 1947. The picture shows well-dressed, happy White people sitting at a banquet table overflowing with place settings, goblets, and so much food the table cannot hold any more: a roast, gravy boats, bread and butter, covered dishes, heaping platters of sides. Hovering behind them and filling the rest...