Education Is the 21st-Century LiberatorBlack Leaders on Education: UNCF's chief notes today's freedom struggle, 150 years after slavery. |
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(Special to The Root) -- Continuing their historical practice of working together to address issues of concern to the African-American community, the NAACP, National Urban League, United Negro College Fund and NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund are working cooperatively to improve educational opportunities for all students. This week we will run op-eds by the leaders of each organization that address a crucial aspect of what it will take to prepare our young people to succeed in life. Today: The president of the NAACP addresses college readiness and the gap in four-year-college graduation rates. See previous essays in the series here.
Jan. 1 marked the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. But has a century and a half of progress lived up to the freedom for all races that the proclamation and constitutional amendments that followed seemed to augur?
Two years after the proclamation, as chronicled by the current film that bears his name, President Abraham Lincoln would succeed in passing through Congress the 13th Amendment to the Constitution that formally