CHARLES E. MERRILL, JR., educator, founder, and headmaster for many years at the Commonwealth School in Boston. He chaired the Morehouse board of trustees for over a decade and created fellowships which enabled Morehouse and Spelman students and faculty to study and travel abroad. I spent fifteen months in Europe during my junior year at Spelman College on a Merrill Fellowship.
AMZIE MOORE, a pillar of the Civil Rights Movement in Cleveland, Mississippi who shepherded me and other young civil rights workers through the ropes of survival.
BOB MOSES, now director of the Algebra Project and a former MacArthur Prize Fellow, initiated in 1961 the Mississippi voter registration organizing campaign for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). His remarkable leadership in the Mississippi movement is chronicled in Taylor Branch’s Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963–1965.
OTIS MOSS, pastor of the Olivet Institutional Baptist Church in Cleveland, Ohio, civil rights activist who succeeded Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as co-pastor with Dr. Martin Luther King, Sr., of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. Key voice in the Atlanta Civil Rights Movement, he currently chairs Morehouse College’s board of trustees, CDF’s Black Church Initiative, and is worship leader of the annual Samuel De Witt Proctor Institute for Child Advocacy Ministry at CDF–Haley Farm.
ROSA PARKS, catalyst for the Montgomery bus boycott and the launching of the Civil Rights Movement. She heads the Raymond and Rosa L. Parks Institute and is the author of Rosa Parks: My Story and Quiet Strength.
SAMUEL DEWITT PROCTOR, great preacher and educator. President of A&T and Virginia Union Universities and successor to Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., as senior minister at Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City. He was first worship leader of the Institute for Child Advocacy Ministry at Haley Farm, now named for him. In My Moral Odyssey he describes the development of his moral consciousness.
LILLIAN SMITH, white southern writer and fighter for racial and gender equality. Her books include Strange Fruit and Killers of the Dream.
HOWARD THURMAN, influential Black theologian who was the first dean of the chapel at Howard University, co-founder of the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco, and dean of the chapel at Boston University. I was privileged to hear this prolific writer and eloquent speaker in chapel at Spelman College.
SOJOURNER TRUTH, former slave woman and eloquent voice for the abolition of slavery and equal rights for Blacks and women. Her life is chronicled in Nell Painter’s Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol.
HARRIET TUBMAN, fearless former slave who shepherded other slaves to freedom on her daring underground railroad. She is often referred to as the Black Moses.
WATIES WARING, courageous federal district judge from South Carolina who was considered a traitor by Whites who opposed his decisions outlawing the Whites-only primary and equalizing compensation for White and Black teachers in South Carolina.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, the extraordinary Black educator and leader. Born a slave, he taught at Hampton Institute from which he graduated and served as president of Tuskegee Institute. His influential autobiography Up from Slavery recounts his life. He was the most powerful Black leader of his time rivalled only by W. E. B. DuBois.
KATE WINSTON, a warm, kind church woman who visited my hometown in the summers and spoiled me with fancy clothes and attention.
ARTHUR JEROME WRIGHT, SR., my father and role model who served as pastor of the Shiloh Baptist Church in Bennettsville, South Carolina for twenty-five years. At Shiloh, he succeeded Dr. J. J. Starks, the first Black president of Benedict College in Columbia, South Carolina, who was his mentor.
HARRY STARKS WRIGHT, SR., my brother and surrogate father after Daddy died. A Morehouse graduate, he left Colgate-Rochester Divinity School to assume our father’s responsibilities as pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church. He later earned his doctorate of divinity at Southern Methodist University and served as chaplain and president of Bishop College.
MAGGIE LEOLA BOWEN WRIGHT, my mother, who served as church organist, choir director, principal fundraiser, organizer of the Mothers’ Club, and general partner in my father’s ministry at Shiloh. She carried on these tasks for thirty years after his death.
ANDREW YOUNG, Dr. King’s chief lieutenant at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference who became the first Black congressman from Georgia since Reconstruction. He later served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the Carter Administration and as mayor of Atlanta. His autobiography is Way Out of No Way: The Spiritual Memoirs of Andrew Young and he is author of Easy Burden: The Civil Rights Movement and the Transformation of America.
JACK YOUNG, R. JESS BROWN, AND CARSIE HALL, the only Black civil rights attorneys when I moved to Mississippi who provided me guidance, support, and legal cover until I could gain admission to the Mississippi Bar. They represent the extraordinarily brave band of lawyers throughout the South whose behind-the-scenes legal support enabled the Civil Rights Movement to succeed.
VIVIAN YOUNG, friend and civil leader who befriended me during my junior year abroad in Geneva, Switzerland, where her husband Joe worked for the International Labor Organization (ILO). She now heads Stand for Children in Delaware.
HOWARD ZINN, chair of the history department at Spelman College when I was a student and later a Boston University faculty member. A prolific writer, his books include The Southern Mystique, SNCC: The New Abolitionists, A People’s History of the United States, Declarations of Independence, and You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train.
WORKS CITED
Barboza, Steven, ed. The African American Book of Values (Doubleday, 1998).
Blackwell, Unita. Taped interview with the Children’s Defense Fund at the former Alex Haley Farm, CDF’s center for spiritual renewal and leadership development.
Branch, Taylor. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954–1963 (Simon and Schuster, 1998), Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963–1965 (Touchstone, 1999). Tape of speech at Children’s Defense Fund forum at the Civil Rights Museum, Memphis, Tenn.
Carter, Mae Bertha. Taped interviews with Children’s Defense Fund at Haley Farm and in her home in Drew, Miss., 1999.
Children’s Defense Fund. A Chronology of the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF, 1998).
Clark, Septima. Ready from Within. Edited by Cynthia Stokes Brown (African World Press, Inc., 1990).
Coles, Dr. Robert. The Story of Ruby Bridges (Scholastic, 1995).
Curry, Constance. Silver Rights (Algonquin, 1995).
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., and Nellie Y. McKay, eds. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature (W. W. Norton, 1996).
Gide, André. The Immoralist. Translated by Stanley Applebaum (Dover, 1996).
Grant, Joanne. Ella Baker: Freedom Bound (John Wiley & Sons, 1998). Henderson, Michael. The Forgiveness Factor (Grosvenor Books, 1996).
Holy Bible.
Homer. The Odyssey, tr. by W. H. D. Rouse (Mentor, 1937), and tr. by Robert Fagles (Penguin, 1999).
Horton, Myles, with Herbert and Judith Kohl, contributors. The Long Haul: An Autobiography (Doubleday, 1990).
Kennedy, Robert F. Speeches obtained from John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Mass.
Lanker, Brian. I Dream a World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1989).
Lerner, Gerda, ed. Black Women in White America (Vintage, 1972).
Malcolm X. The Autobiography of Malcolm X (Ballantine, 1964).
Marsh, Charles. God’s Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights (Princeton Univ. Press, 1958).
Mays, Benjamin E. Quotable Quotes (Vintage, 1983).
Mills, Kay. This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer (Plume, 1994).
National Conference of Catholic Bishops. “Putting Children and Families First: A Challenge for Our Church, Nation, and the World,” a pastoral letter, 1991.
Outward Bound. Readings from the Hurricane Island Outward Bound School (Rockland, Maine).
Proctor, Dr.
Samuel DeWitt. Tape of sermon at CDF’s Institute for Child Advocacy Ministry held at the Alex Haley Farm.
Quinn, Tracey, ed. Quotable Women of the Twentieth Century (Bill Adler Books, Inc., 1999).
Smith, Lillian. How Am I To Be Heard: Letters of Lillian Smith. Edited by Margaret Rose Gladney (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1996).
The Talmud.
Taylor, Dr. Gardner. Tape of sermon at CDF’s Institute for Child Advocacy Ministry held at the Alex Haley Farm.
Thurman, Howard. Deep Is the Hunger (Harper, 1951), The Growing Edge (Friends United Press, 1974), Jesus and the Disinherited (Beacon Press, 1996).
Tolstoy, Leo. A Calendar of Wisdom. Translated by Peter Sekirin (Scribner, 1997).
Washington, James Melvin, ed. A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Harper, 1991).
Young, Andrew. Tape of the Children’s Defense Fund forum at the Civil Rights Museum, Memphis, Tenn., and tape of the CDF meeting at the Alex Haley Farm.
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BEACON PRESS
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© 1999 by Marian Wright Edelman
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Edelman, Marian Wright.
Lanterns : a memoir of mentors / Marian Wright Edelman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ).
eISBN: 978-0-8070-7199-1
ISBN 0-8070-7214-1 (acid-free paper)
1. Edelman, Marian Wright. 2. Mentoring—United States. 3. Edelman, Marian Wright—Friends and associates. 4. Afro-American women social reformers—Biography. 5. Edelman, Marian Wright—Philosophy. 6. Conduct of life. 7. Children—United States—Conduct of life. I. Title
E185.97.E33A3 1999
362.7’ 09221—dc21 99-044228
Lanterns Page 21