Lanterns: A Memoir of Mentors Hardcover - 1999

First line

THE DISTINGUISHED THEOLOGIAN Howard Thurman once described an oak tree in his childhood yard with leaves that each autumn turned yellow and died, but stayed on the branches all winter.

Media reviews

All who love children are served generously and intelligently by the ideas, commitments, and passion of Marian Wright Edelman. Her arms are open to the children and adults of the world and we all are stronger and more safe because of her. —Maya Angelou

"From the earliest years of the campaign for civil rights to the most recent struggles on behalf of children of all races, this memoir summons up the sense of deep and personal discipleship that each and every one of us depends upon to keep alive a flame of hope. Lanterns is a radiant and transcendent book, filled with moral lessons from the youth of a courageous woman to the hearts of those who follow in her footsteps: a gift of love from one heroic generation to the next." —Jonathan Kozol

"I am pleased to have been selected by Marian Wright Edelman, who has championed the rights for thousands of children in this century, as one of her mentors." —Mrs. Rosa L. Parks

"This memoir, lucidly and poignantly told, offers a compelling moral history of our country-an account of how brave and honorable individuals helped us make changes both necessary and important to accomplish." —Robert Coles