Lanterns

October 4, 1999
Driven by the knowledge that she never for a moment lacked a purpose worth fighting, living and dying for, Edelman (The Measure of Our Success; Guide My Feet) recounts how she relied on the strength of her forebears and the hunger of those in need to push her through the halls of Spelman College and then Yale University School of Law. Here, she pays homage to those who have lit her path. As the head of the Children's Defense Fund, Edelman recognizes the importance of mentors in the lives of children. She recalls those who encouraged her by word or example to think and act outside of the low expectations many have for black girls and women. She cites her parents as her first guides and credits her father for instilling in her a voracious appetite for knowledge. Other mentors include "unlettered" men and women in the segregated, close-knit community of Bennettsville, N.C., where she grew up. Once she entered the halls of academia, she met others: Dr. Benjamin Mays, former president of Morehouse College; historian Howard Zinn, a professor at Spelman College; and Charles Merrill, who created a fellowship that enabled her to travel to Europe. They helped shape her views by encouraging her to think "outside the box." Other lanterns on her path include Bob Moses, Mae Bertha Carter and Unita Blackwell, the civil rights activists with whom Edelman worked as the first black woman attorney in Mississippi. Thoughtfully written, this book is a testament to family, community and spiritual values.

November 1, 1999
As president of the Children's Defense Fund, Edelman fights tirelessly for the rights of the young. In this memoir, she pays tribute to those who helped shape her life, and shows how crucial their influences were. They include her parents, teachers, and civil rights activists like Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, and Martin Luther King.

Copyright 1999 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 1999
At a time when mentoring, as Edelman notes, has become professionalized, she looks back on unofficial and informal mentors, what she calls "natural daily mentors," in her life. The list includes the famous and the obscure, the wealthy and the poor, black and white, male and female, even children. She recounts her childhood in the small town of Bennettville, South Carolina, and her years at Spelman College where Dr. Benjamin E. Mays, Howard Zinn, and Charles Merrill Jr. were her mentors. Edelman includes excerpts from a diary she kept while a student traveling in Europe and experiencing freedom from the social constraints of both Spelman and the South's Jim Crow laws. She recounts her initial reluctance to return home, where a "changing South, the civil rights movement, and Dr. King were poised to give a powerful outlet to my longings," and struggling to choose a career, eventually deciding on the law and attending Yale Law School. Edelman went on to join the civil rights struggle in Mississippi in the 1960s and to gain mentors in Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Fannie Lou Hamer. Her involvement in the civil rights movement evolved into an avid interest in antipoverty and children's rights, leading to her creation of the Children's Defense Fund. She met her husband, Peter Edelman, then legislative aide to Robert Kennedy, when she was seeking publicity for the appalling poverty of the rural South. Throughout this absorbing memoir, Edelman's voice resounds with spirituality, a reliance on her faith, and a belief in equality. ((Reviewed September 1, 1999))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1999, American Library Association.)