"Some of the best lessons I have learned did not come from Harvard or Yale or Princeton or Ph.D. trained mouths. They came from poor women and men educated in the school of life."—Marion Wright Edelman

Mrs. Theresa "Tee" Kelly, Mrs. Lucy McQueen and Miss Kate Winston—none of them famous—all of them community members who became influential in the life of founder and president of the Children's Defense Fund, Marian Wright Edelman. In Lanterns: A Memoir of Mentors (Beacon, 1999), Edelman chronicles her rise as a child advocate and civil rights leader while paying homage to the individuals, both well-known and unknown, who lit the way for her and for others.

The book, Edelman's fifth, comes at a time when the nation is basking in the glow of a strong economy. Instead of just "hanging in there," many Americans have the luxury and the desire to look past their own backyards. A recent study shows that 70 percent of American households give charitably, and over half of Americans volunteer. Clearly, there is more on the average American's mind than the bull market, and rather than just reaching into our wallets, we are reaching out.

Edelman reminds us, however, that although the U.S. is first among industrialized countries in military technology, in the number of millionaires and billionaires, in health technology and in defense expenditures—we stand tenth in our children's eighth-grade science scores, seventeenth in low-birth rates, and last in protecting our children against gun violence.

According to Edelman, we are running the risk of leaving children behind in our "too careless, too fast, too busy culture." And we are in danger of allowing our children to self-destruct, or "grow up thinking life is about acquiring rather than sharing, selfishness rather than sacrifice and material rather than spiritual wealth." Unless, that is, we regain our moral bearing.

More and more, we are beginning to acknowledge the importance of mentoring programs, like
Big Brothers/Big Sisters and the National Mentoring Partnership, in which trained adults volunteer a few hours a week to help kids with homework, play games, or just lend an ear to show them that someone believes in their abilities. These programs fill in the gaps in communities where kids need safe and structured activities outside of school as well as consistent and caring adults in their lives.

Yet of all the mentors in Edelman's childhood and adulthood—from the ladies of the Baptist church at which her father was pastor to Robert F. Kennedy and Sojourner Truth—not one belonged to an official mentoring organization. That is Edelman's point. It is not just through volunteer programs, but through our everyday actions that we mentor our children. There may not have been any such mentoring programs in Edelman's Bennettsville, South Carolina home town, either, but elders like Kelly, McQueen and Winston saw themselves as community co-parents.

Edelman tells of shoeboxes filled with dollar bills and fried chicken and biscuits sent to her at college from the women who had been her friends and teachers as a child. "My parents did not have to raise me and my sister and brothers alone," Edelman writes. "The whole community helped them and me just as they helped other people raise their children."

From one family to the world at large
Edelman's mother, a pillar of the Baptist church where her father was a pastor, organized a Mother's Club to emphasize the importance of mother's leadership roles at home and in the community. Her father sacrificed so that his children could go to the best schools and fulfill their responsibilities—not only family responsibilities, but their responsibilities to stand up and confront injustice in the world.

It is not only a moral obligation we have to speak for those too young to speak for themselves, Edelman believes, but an obligation to the future of our society if we are to continue to be a world power in the 21st century. We must be mindful of all children, not just our own: "Children who are the least likely to be read to and sung to at home by their mothers, or by their fathers... are the most likely to attend schools with the least qualified teachers, the poorest equipment and supplies, and the fewest counselors... And they are likely to live in neighborhoods with fewer safe playgrounds and greater violence and drug trafficking."

Lanterns is not only a tribute to Edelman's mentors, but an autobiography in which she describes her childhood as a black girl in the south, observing racial inequality in both public and private life. The book also chronicles Edelman's years at the all-woman, all-black Spelman College in her fellowships overseas, her years at Yale Law school, and her involvement in the civil rights movement, including the Montgomery bus boycott, the student sit-ins, the march from Selma to Montgomery, and the Poor People's Campaign.

The book includes a parent's pledge to act on behalf of all children and twenty-five "more" lessons for life, continued from Edelman's earlier book, The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours. This book offers a different way for adults to measure success, and for us to measure the success of our country—adults acting with all our children in mind.

Julee Newberger is assistant managing editor of Connect for Kids.