The Black Community Crusade for Children: Saving Our Children

The Black Community Crusade for Children (BCCC) has organized to confront a deepening crisis faced by Black children and is calling on America to take action. A toxic cocktail of poverty, illiteracy, racial disparity, violence and massive incarceration is sentencing millions of children of color to dead end, powerless and hopeless lives and threatens to undermine the past half century of racial and social progress.

Find the latest research and analysis here, and decide if you think this is the worst crisis faced by Black children since slavery. Watch videos of Black leaders, thought leaders, talking about the challenges and the solutions. Get informed, get connected, and join the crusade for all our children. We don’t have a minute, or another child, to lose.

Watch the BCCC Press Conference

On Thursday, January 13, 2011, Marian Wright Edelman and Geoffrey Canada announced the BCCC strategies and goals to confront the deepening crisis facing children. Geoff Garin, president of Hart Research Associates, joined them to present important new research he has conducted on behalf of CDF. Watch the press conference here.

New Video and Research Findings on Black Children

Watch this video of Black children, in their own words, describing the challenges they face. These children participated in an in-depth study conducted by Hart Research Associates for CDF on behalf of the BCCC. Download the report, “The State of Black Children and Families”.

History of the Black Community Crusade for Children

The BCCC, co-convened by CDF with Dr. John Hope Franklin and Dr. Dorothy Height, was quietly launched in 1990 to combat one of the worst crises the Black child and family faced since slavery. Over the past two decades, BCCC’s successes include the CDF Freedom Schools^® program; the Harlem Children’s Zone; youth leadership development programs which have trained 20,000 young leaders; economic empowerment work in 77 “Black Belt” southern counties; and the placed-based policy work of PolicyLink.

Learn more about the history of the BCCC by downloading our new publication “Call to Action For Our Children.”