The single mother living in the Harriet Tubman housing project was too frightened to tell me her name.
She was afraid gangs would attack her children.
“If you print my name in that newspaper, they’ll come after my kids,” she said. “They’ll blow up my place.”
Down the street, Geoffrey Canada had just finished speaking to a packed Hardy Elementary School auditorium. Teachers, pastors, politicians and parents took notes and nodded in agreement as Canada – the superhero of American education today – told his story.
“We were tired of watching our community disintegrate,” he said. “We were tired of watching generation after generation of kids fail and go to jail.”