The Long Road from White Supremacy to Equality

by | Dec 12, 2011 | Opinion

My grandpa grew up on a dairy farm in Greenville, S.C. He was born in 1917, so he was a teenager during the Great Depression and at the beginning of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first term as president and the New Deal. He had three sisters and four brothers; the...

Our Culture Tells Poor Kids: You Have No Value

by | Nov 25, 2011 | Opinion

“If you could open your mailbox and find anything inside, what would it be?” I asked a small group of second-graders after we read a story about a mole who opened her mailbox and found a kite. I expected them to answer my question with things like video...

Poor People’s Campaign Needed More Than Ever

by | Nov 8, 2011 | Opinion

In early 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders continued plans for a Poor People’s Campaign. It would take place in the spring in Washington, D.C. The poor and those in solidarity with them would take up temporary residence and march...

S.C. Undermines Immigrants’ Right to Feel Safe

by | Oct 21, 2011 | Opinion

Santos is a fifth-grader at my school. When he was in second grade, he was in my classroom for the first half of the school year. His parents are migrant workers, so when the spring, summer and fall work on South Carolina farms slows and stops with the winter winds,...