THE NEW YORK TIMES has this week given more space to Scarlett Johansson suing Disney than they give in a year to the issue of the city’s schools’ failure to teach every school kid to read well.

 

Rosenwald Schools. You may not have heard of them. Amazing that we didn’t know or hear much if anything about them. Booker T. Washington got with Julius Rosenwald head of Sears in Chicago in 1911 and from those discussions came a commitment from Rosenwald to help build and fund schools for under-served Black students in the South. From 1912 to 1937 Rosenwald helped underwrite 4,978 schools. Maya Angelou attended a Rosenwald School, so did Medgar Evers. John Lewis did too. He wrote the foreword to this book done by Andrew Feiler a photographer who took photos of some of the structures that still stand. Here’s a connection to an enlightening talk with Feiler which I just watched. I ordered the book from my bookstore after I watched:

https://youtu.be/Eh8hLzy5K6w

 

Bob Moses a pioneer of the civil rights movement dies at 86.

In a 2014 interview with Julian Bond, Mr. Moses credited his parents with fostering his love of learning, recalling that they would collect books for him every week from the local library in Harlem.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/25/us/bob-moses-dead.html?referringSource=articleShare

IN A NEW YORK TIMES PIECE ON summer schools going on right now: ‘This moment is critical. Research shows that students who do not learn to read proficiently by the beginning of fourth grade are likely to remain poor readers in high school, and are at higher risk of dropping out or failing to graduate on time.’