Edelman cites '60s activism in Hub speech

Edelman cites '60s activism in Hub speech

Jennifer R. Wilder

Marian Wright Edelman visited Boston on October 8, to talk about her new book, Lanterns: A Memoir of Mentors, at the Kennedy Library, Harvard University, and at Wheelock College.

Edelman is president of the Children's Defense Fund and author of The Measure of Our Success and Guide My Feet. She has been hailed by many as one of the most outspoken black women in the United States.

Throughout her visit to Boston she shared memories and insights about her book, but at Wheelock College, she had a very special audience and message.

Welcoming Edelman to Wheelock were the college's president, Marjorie Bakken; Vice-President for Community Relations Theresa Perry; Boston School Superintendent Thomas Payzant; and Wanda Speede-Franklin, head of the Cambridge Friends School.

Because of its mission, Wheelock College gathered an audience of current and future educators and professionals devoted to working with young children.

Consistent with that mission, the College invited sixth-grade students from several area schools to join them, including the Young Achievers and Trotter Schools in Boston, the Banneker School, and the Cambridge Friends School.

Young Achievers teacher, Bisse Bowman, shared the podium and introduced one of her sixth-graders, La'Ray Brison. It was Brison who introduced Edelman to the audience. La'Ray and her fellow students had read Edelman's book, and she shared with the audience how much its message inspired her to want to become a mentor to younger children herself.

Edelman wanted to deliver special messages to the many constituencies in her audience. She recounted how fortunate she felt to have had such great leaders as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy as mentors in her life, but she reminded her listeners that parents, community co-parents, and teachers are the natural everyday mentors in a child's life.

"I serve today because my parents served. They were my role models," she said. "We do not have a child or youth problem in America," she continued. "We have an adult problem in America."

Noting that many children are confused because adults say one thing and do another, Edelman pushed every listener to take responsibility for mentoring children. To this audience full of current and future teachers and social service providers she said, "Yours is not a job, but a mission. You have such influence about how children view themselves."

The audience interrupted Edelman several times with applause as she called for a return to some of the social activism that formed her life in the '60s. She recalled that the message against hunger and poverty that Robert Kennedy carried to Mississippi led eventually to positive antipoverty programs in subsequent administrations.

"To see hunger return now is wrong," said Edelman. "Yes, we should end welfare. We should end welfare by ending poverty."

For her message to the young people in the audience, Edelman drew on a story about Frederick Douglass. He had once been traveling on a train, and the conductor made him move from the passenger car to the baggage car because he was Black.

When a group of concerned passengers joined him and expressed their anger, he proudly said, "I am not the one being degraded, but those who are inflicting this on me are being degraded."

"Don't forget that you are very special," Edelman said to her young listeners. "Remember that you have the capacity for anything. But you cannot think of harming another who is like you, because everyone else is also special."

Pointing to her activist youth, Edelman also told young students, "You are not citizens-in-waiting! You can make a difference right now."

School children stood up in Jackson, Mississippi and Birmingham and faced angry mobs in New Orleans and Little Rock in the '60s, Edelman noted.

"Teachers can enable students to make a difference right now," she continued, by showing them how to become socially active and effective.

Edelman's book has only recently become available and is published by Houghton Mifflin Company.

Photo (Dr. Marian Wright Edelman, Wanda Speede-Franklin, Thomas Payzant)