Posts by Ben Dawson

  • A Child Watch Coda

    After 40 years, today’s column will be the last in the weekly Child Watch® series. Today is not yet the conclusion to the reasons this column began, nor to the need to stay vigilant.

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  • “The America That Is Yet to Come”

    This month marked the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the historic legislation President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law at the U.S. Capitol with many of the Democratic and Republican lawmakers who had helped secure its large bipartisan victory and civil rights leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lewis, and Mrs. Rosa Parks, by his side.

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  • Holding a Vision

    A few months before the National Museum of African American History and Culture’s official opening in September 2016, Dr. Rex M. Ellis, the museum’s founding Associate Director for Curatorial Affairs, spoke to college-aged servant-leaders who were preparing to teach in Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) Freedom Schools® summer programs.

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  • A Solemn Anniversary

    This week was the solemn 80th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the first and only time nuclear weapons have been used in war.

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  • Early Childhood

    The Best of What Education Can Be

    The CDF Freedom Schools model is indeed designed to light a spark and be an example of the best of what education can be. CDF Freedom Schools sites provide summer and after-school enrichment through a research-based and multicultural program model that supports students, or “scholars,” in grades K-12 and their families.

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  • Education

    “Strong Schools Brighter Futures!”

    More than 12,000 scholars in CDF Freedom Schools programs participate in National Day of Social Action, a collective organizing effort centered around CDF’s mission to build community so young people grow up with dignity, hope, and joy.

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  • Being Loving Champions for Justice

    For people whose hearts are broken by seeing news of parents, families, and children suffering anywhere, this has been a difficult week.

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  • Fourth of July Lessons from Frederick Douglass

    On a Fourth of July when many Americans are expressing profound concerns about whether the government’s orders, decisions, and votes are representing their voices and asking questions about what we the people means today, it is an opportune time to return to the keynote speech Frederick Douglass gave in Rochester, New York, at an Independence Day celebration on July 5, 1852.

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