This week’s column celebrates the 100th anniversary of writer James Baldwin’s birth on August 2, 1924.  Baldwin was a freethinker who called out discrimination in any form, exposing uncomfortable truths about America and American religion.  I find him most perceptive in his views on education.

A brief excerpt from “To Find Our Way: James Baldwin at One-Hundred” (read the entire column in your local USA Today newspaper, or here, this weekend):

In his essay, “A Talk to Teachers” (December, 1963), Baldwin speaks his uncompromising truth: “My ancestors and I were very well trained. We understood very early that this was not a Christian nation. It didn’t matter what you said or how often you went to church. [We] knew that Christians didn’t act this way.” Even with his personal experience of serious racial divisions in the country, Baldwin had hope, and it began with education. He wished each child was taught to know their own worth, to use their “tremendous potential and tremendous energy” to help America to “find her way.”