Jonathan Kozol

At a time when the racial tensions that divide us have become the focus of urgent and renewed political attention and the glaring inequalities in public education continue to betray the spirit of democracy, Jonathan Kozol’s classic works have drawn him back into the public spotlight once again.

A Rhodes Scholar, former fourth grade teacher, and a passionate advocate for child-centered learning, Kozol remains one of the most widely read and highly honored education writers in the nation.

His first book, "Death at an Early Age," a description of his first year as a teacher, received the National Book Award in Science, Philosophy, and Religion. Among his other major works are "Rachel and Her Children," a study of homeless mothers and their children, which received the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, and "Savage Inequalities," which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992. His 1995 bestseller, "Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation," received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in 1996, an honor previously granted to the works of Langston Hughes and Dr. Martin Luther King.

Ten years later, in "The Shame of the Nation," a description of conditions that he found in nearly 60 public schools, Kozol wrote that inner-city children were more isolated racially than at any time since federal courts began dismantling the landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. "The Shame of the Nation" appeared on The New York Times bestseller list the week that it was published.

Kozol remains one of the nation’s most eloquent and outspoken advocates for equality and racial justice in our nation’s schools. Now, more than ever, as school inequality and racial segregation have mounted to the highest levels we have seen in many decades, he argues that it's time at last to batter down the walls that have locked the children of the Black and brown and very poor into seemingly eternal separation from the mainstream of American society. "We Shall Not Bow Down, Children of Color Under Siege: An Invocation to Resistance," is the culminating work of Kozol’s career, where he directly confronts President Trump’s assault on diversity and independent thinking and the dignity of teachers in the public schools.