O God of the children of Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala Of Syria, Nigeria, Liberia, Sudan and South Africa Of Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Myanmar, Israel, Iran and Iraq Of Libya, Yemen and Ukraine, Nepal and Kashmir, Of the Congo, Charleston and Cleveland, of Darfur and Detroit Of all refugee children without a country to welcome them, at sea in flimsy boats, struggling across steaming deserts to find safety, or caged in holding pens as they seek asylum, Help us to love and respect and protect and welcome them all. O God of Black and Brown and White children and those all mixed...

I was devastated by the loss earlier this year of Dr. Donald Stewart. He and his wife Isabel Carter Stewart have been among my dearest, dearest friends. Donald served as president of my alma mater Spelman College from 1976 to 1986, overlapping with my own tenure on Spelman’s Board of Trustees and then as Board Chair, where he took Spelman to new heights and set it on the path to its standing today as a leading liberal arts and historically Black college ranked #51 on U.S. News and World Report’s list of National Liberal Arts Colleges. I was so proud when Spelman’s robotics team made history...

This Fourth of July I am returning to the wise words of my late friend Dr. Vincent Harding, the revered historian, theologian, social justice activist, and visionary who never lost sight of the “beloved community” his friend and colleague Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. believed our nation and world could become. In July 2012 on his 81st birthday Dr. Harding spoke at the National and Racial Healing Town Hall at a Children’s Defense Fund’s conference. He told us he believed America was a wounded nation, but despite so many years of struggle he remained convinced America could and must get better...

I was deeply sorry to hear of the passing of my friend Mayor Unita Blackwell. She was one of a kind. She was always laughing and making other people laugh and she never stopped growing, learning, rolling with the punches, and punching back when she had to. As a civil rights activist, a member of the executive committee of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party along with Fannie Lou Hamer, and the first Black woman mayor in Mississippi, Unita achieved many “firsts.” She was elected mayor of Mayersville, Mississippi in 1976 and served for more than 20 years. She also became President of the...

“I can’t do a lot of the extra stuff that I would like to do for my kids or with my kids because I just can’t afford to. No vacations. There’s not too much going to the movies or little outings. Even getting school uniforms together is expensive. Sometimes they have to wear stuff from last year. I have a lot of guilt because I can’t provide for them the way that I want to.” The Children’s Defense Fund recently released our latest report on Ending Child Poverty Now once again showing just how much poverty is hurting our children and nation and sullying our pretensions to be an equal...

Baby dolls, tiny trucks, toy food and dress-up capes. Scattered about the ballroom of a motel in Northeast Washington, D.C., and captured in a Washington Post column by Petula Dvorak, these hallmarks of child’s play are not merely a sign of productive imaginations—they’re evidence of a larger child and family poverty crisis that must end in our affluent nation. Twenty minutes outside the city’s downtown, a stretch of budget motels along a major highway serve as overflow shelters for homeless families in the nation’s capital. They have strict rules about where children are seen and heard...