JEWSINTHED ON THE COVER
Seven Detroit students and their Jewish attorney sued the state over their lack of basic literacy. Here’s the story behind their landmark lawsuit and its aftermath. CORRIE COLF CONTRIBUTING WRITER
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large brick building with caging on the windows, metal detectors and security guards greet guests when they arrive at Osborn High School in northeast Detroit. Rodents, garbage cans and unusable bathrooms abound. There aren’t enough desks, teachers or books. Welcome to public school in Detroit. “It really felt like I was going into a jail, more so than school,” Osborn grad Jamarria Hill said. Twenty-year-old Hill grew up in the city of Detroit. He was just 15 years old when attorney Mark Rosenbaum approached him, his father and his other basketball teammates after one of their summer games. Rosenbaum informed Hill and his father, who was the athletic director and basketball coach at Osborn, about the opportunity to join a lawsuit that would fight for a better education and a constitutional right to literacy. Mark “If the schools are bad and Rosenbaum torn down, then the neighborhood is bad and torn down,” Hill said. “Then when there are schools being closed
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DECEMBER 31 • 2020
ANTHONY LANZILOTE/BRIDGE MAGAZINE
Right to Read
DETROIT LITERACY GROUP
The
and incarceration centers being built, and then they’re looking at our test scores to predict, not just what job or career we will have, but if we’re going to be in jail or dead. “So, basically, it was like, how can we be productive citizens to society without education?” Growing up, Hill attended charter schools. Arriving at Osborn for high school was his first experience with Detroit public schools. “I took school for granted, as most people do when they have a great school foundation,” Hill said. “My mom always told me how bad Detroit public schools were because she grew up in Detroit public schools, but I never really understood what she meant by it until I got into high school.” In 2016, Hill and six other students from Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPS) had had enough of these conditions. They sued the state of Michigan and thenGov. Rick Snyder (later, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer became the lead named defendant), claiming they were not taught how to read during their time in the low-performing schools of Detroit. Rosenbaum was their lead attorney.
The case, also known as the “Right to Read” lawsuit, argued that all children have a constitutional right to literacy and to a basic minimum education. The lawsuit went on for four years and ended this June in a landmark settlement. And Rosenbaum, a Los Angeles-based attorney who has spent decades spearheading big legal battles for civil rights, found himself returning to Michigan — a state where he completed his own undergraduate education and taught law for decades — in order to sue it. But he saw it as a fight worth having. “I don’t think there’s a more important fight in this country than the fight to see that all kids have a fair education,” Rosenbaum said. “As long as they don’t have access to literacy, the nation isn’t a democracy and isn’t true to its ideals.” A PATH TO SOCIAL JUSTICE Rosenbaum didn’t always see himself as a lawyer. He was raised in Cincinnati as a Reform Jew and attended Sunday school at the city’s Hebrew Union College as a child. He com-
