I painted Jonathan Kozol, educator, writer and champion of inner-city schools, in 2004.

At that time I had resolved to paint 50 people with whom I could surround myself, people whose struggles to
insist that we live up to our proclaimed ideals of justice and equality had made a difference, people who modeled the courageous citizenship which we need now. 2004 was the year I hit that 50 mark, and realized I was just getting started. It was the year that I realized that not all of my heroes were historical figures but that I was living amidst many inspiring people who were alive and willing us toward becoming a more perfect nation.

Kozol stood out to me because of his life-long devotion to exposing and improving the brutal inequalities in public education. Despite Brown v. Board of Education, in 1954, our inner-city schools are largely as segregated and underfunded as they were 80 years ago.

I am now 79 and Kozol will turn 90 in September—time to catch up with him and find out what he is up to.

Turns out he has not “retired” but is still driven by love and rage—love for the students, rage at the system that serves them so poorly. He is fighting to convince the American public that we have not yet realized the aspirational promise of equality in education. In his most recent book, he argues that we are, in fact, headed in the opposite direction. Released in April 2026, We Shall Not Bow Down, Children of Color Under Siege: An Invocation to Resistance is described as the culminating work of Kozol’s career, where he directly confronts President Trump’s assault on diversity and independent thinking and the dignity of teachers in the public schools.

And this from the publisher, Seven Stories Press:

“[Kozol] takes aim directly at the disparate agenda that denies Black and Latino children the right to question their oppressive education and the system that rewards compliance instead of creativity. This extreme degree of authoritarian instruction, Kozol writes, has robbed too many of our children of the power to think independently at a time when it is desperately needed in the face of an administration that is threatening the very essences of democracy. Kozol calls for a passionate resistance to these forms of inequality.

“In this book, Jonathan also confronts the assault by Donald Trump on the dignity and autonomy of teachers. ‘I have always believed,’ he writes, ;and I still believe today, that teachers in the classrooms of young children are the front-line soldiers in the defense of our democracy.’ And he portrays dozens of warm and loving and ethically courageous teachers who refuse to genuflect before an oppressive and autocratic order.

“It is with Jonathan’s permission that I tell you that he was so worn down by the writing of this book that he landed in Mt. Auburn hospital in Cambridge a month ago with a minor seizure. He was in the hospital for five days but fortunately was released without any damage to his speaking or writing ability. He is now at home recovering, surrounded by his friends.”

I’d also like to share an excerpt from a Q & A with Kozol that resonated for me. Asked “If a young teacher were to read your work in 10 or 20 years from now, what would you most want them to carry with them into their classrooms and their lives as educators?” he replied:

“I would want to tell young teachers never to genuflect before an autocratic ethos that robs them of autonomy and denies their students the right to learn for the joy that learning brings them. I would ask them to turn their backs on punitive agendas that atrophy the curiosity of children, to celebrate their sense of whim and wonderment, and create a feast of riches in their classrooms.

“Most of all, I would urge them to listen patiently to children, even when the questions they may ask us threaten to delay the pacing of our lessons and may bear no obvious connection to the standardized objective we’re pursuing.

“My closest friend and mentor in my work in education was not a grim and data-driven academic icon laden with self-confident abstractions and statistics. It was a wise and gentle man whom I badly miss today. I’m speaking of Fred Rogers. When we went together into the classrooms of young children, he listened to them carefully and didn’t interrupt them when they told us stories that meandered without endings.

“I’d like to think I’ve followed his example, and I’d hope that teachers 10 or 20 years from now would think of children’s learning as an act of exploration rather than a forced march to a goal or ‘outcome’ that’s already been determined and allows no room for unexpected detours. It’s often in those unexpected detours that a child’s soul reveals itself.”

AWTT honors Jonathan Kozol, for his love and rage, for his decades-long persistent championing of neglected students and their teachers.