Jackson Supports Literacy During National Library Week

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Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr. (center) reads We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro Baseball, by Kadir Nelson to children at Rainbow PUSH Coalition headquarters to kick off National Library Week.
Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr. (center) reads We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro Baseball, by Kadir Nelson to children at Rainbow PUSH Coalition headquarters to kick off National Library Week.

by Dwayne T. Ervin

Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr. kicked offNational Library Week April 12-18by reading to children at RainbowPUSH headquarters to support theimportance of reading.

Parents and children listened asKeith Feils and Rev. Jackson read tothe children. Jackson read, We Arethe Ship: The Story of NegroBaseball, by Kadir Nelson. Thepassage he read was about blacks inbaseball during the early 1900s whowere not allowed to play with whitesin Major League baseball.

The 2009 National Library Weektheme is, Worlds Connect @ YourLibrary. The week of activities,include the release of the State of theAmericas Libraries Report,National Library Workers Day, TopTen of the Most FrequentlyChallenged Books of 2008 and theThird Annual Young Adult LibraryServices Association (YALSA)Supporting Teen Literature Day.

For Teen Literature Day, teenpatients in pediatric hospitals willreceive 8,000 young adult novels,audio books and novels.

According to the 2009 State ofAmericas Libraries report,Americans are turning to their locallibraries for services, yet funding foressential resources have declined.According to the report, Americansvisited libraries nearly 1.4 billiontimes and checked out more than 2billion items in the past year.

Keith Michael Fiels, executivedirector of American LibraryAssociation (ALA) said, People arealso using libraries to find jobs andto get job training. People are findingthat they can only apply for jobsonline. Libraries have the help people [need] to advance their careers,he said.

Literacy is like a light, saidJackson, who recalled a time whenhe was in a cab in Los Angeles onhis way to the airport. The cab driverwas very talkative, he said. Wegot to a terminal and the driver keptgoingwe came around a secondtime [to the terminal.] Then itoccurred to me that he could notread. It was a painful experience tosee that, Jackson said. Reading isthe key to seeing and expanding ourworld, he said.

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