Cover To Cover…‘A Light Shines in Harlem’

Your child loves his teacher;  it’s something you’re grateful for, because that makes it easier for him to go to school. Every morning, he rises with a smile and he comes home excited.
But what if the school your child attended was sub-par? What would you do to ensure that he had the best learning atmosphere possible? As you’ll see in “A Light Shines in Harlem: New York’s First Charter School and the Movement it Led” by Mary C. Bounds, it was a question that needed tackling.
Reverend Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker knew that Harlem youth were in trouble.
As Martin Luther King Jr.’s Chief of Staff, Walker had worked hard for civil rights. As a minister who helped reclaim Harlem’s neighborhoods, he knew the value of education for its citizens—and he was concerned.
“Increasingly,” says Bounds, “Walker heard stories from his congregation about how inner-city schools were failing their children.” He considered opening his own school but logistics prevented it. Still, he never stopped searching for answers—until he found something he thought might work: a charter school.