During the summer of 1968, the 50-year-old civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer delivered a powerful speech on American democracy before a mostly white audience in Kentucky. In Hamer’s vision, all Americans committed to social justice needed to address the unfinished work of building democracy. “We have a grave problem that’s facing us today in this country and if we’re going to make democracy a reality, we better start working now,” she declared.
As disparities in maternal mortality rates and the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 diagnoses and deaths reveal, Black Americans experience poorer health care access and lower quality of care than white Americans. School districts with mostly white students receive significantly greater resources than do districts with mostly students of color.