We Shall Not Bow Down

Children of Color Under Siege: An Invocation to Resistance

by Jonathan Kozol

An eloquent and passionate call for educational transformation.

“An unapologetic cri de coeur about the shortcomings of the schools that serve poor Black and Hispanic children, and thus, the moral failure of the nation to end the inequality [Kozol] has documented for decades.” —New York Times

In We Shall Not Bow Down, legendary educator and bestselling author Jonathan Kozol confronts the extreme and unabated racial segregation in our public schools and the regimen of punitive control that denies Black and Latino children the power of independent and creative thinking that is still more likely to be encouraged in more privileged communities.

Returning to the schools where he worked with children and their teachers for more than fifty years, Kozol reports that separate and unequal education is now at its highest level since the early 1980s. Children of color, Kozol says, are frequently deemed to be a different class of child than students in the mainstream of the nation and are being prepared to accept a subordinate role in the corporate economy. And he directly confronts the far-right’s assault on education and any remaining semblance of diversity and equal opportunity.

At this dangerous political moment, Kozol argues—in this greatly expanded paperback edition of his 2024 hardcover, An End to Inequality—that it’s well past time for militant resistance on the part of decent citizens. Kozol is old enough to remember “the promissory note” that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. described on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. To some, it may seem an impossible dream, but Kozol believes it is still a goal worth fighting for.

“Jonathan Kozol is without doubt one of the most important thought leaders on the past present and future of public education in America…. I am painfully aware that this may be the last great book from this great thinker which is all the more reason we should pore over every single page relishing not only the beauty of his writing and the stories he shares but also the delightful way in which he interacts with even the most vulnerable children.”
—from the introduction by Randi Weingarten, author of Why Fascists Fear Teachers

Buying options

Available for pre-order. This item will be available on April 14, 2026.

Paperback

$16.16

$17.95

Publish Date: 2026-04-14

ISBN: 9781644215302

Pages: 176

Ebook

$7.19

$11.99

Publish Date: 2026-02-10

ISBN: 9781644215319

Pages: 176

“An unapologetic cri de coeur about the shortcomings of the schools that serve poor Black and Hispanic children, and thus, the moral failure of the nation to end the inequality [Kozol] has documented for decades.”

– The New York Times

“An inspired and insightful analysis of race-based challenges in the American school system.”

– Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“In this vigorous polemic, National Book Award winner Kozol … [offers] an impassioned indictment of elementary school education in the U.S. and a cri de cœur for racial equity.”

– Publishers Weekly

“Jonathan Kozol’s voice remains as fresh as ever, not least when he is examining the ongoing failure of the 1954 decision outlawing the lie of separate but equal. As he illustrates with numerous painful examples, the lie lives on in far too many schools where ‘the shadow of plantation days is still a presence . . .’ and the abusive treatment of young children an accepted practice. Jonathan spells out what we can do, and need to do, in order to move this nation towards a more perfect union.”

– Charlayne Hunter-Gault, journalist and author most recently of My People: Five Decades of Writing About Black Lives

“…ozol has relentlessly confronted an unfiltered reality. Why, after all these years, do millions of Black and brown children remain in segregated schools where squalor and dysfunctional facilities degrade them intellectually and physically? For Kozol’s transformative proposals, I urge you to read this jolting book.”

– Ralph Nader

“Heart-wrenching examples and astute argumentation…. This is Kozol at his best.”

– Bob Peterson, founding editor, Rethinking Schools

JONATHAN KOZOL is a Rhodes Scholar, former fourth grade teacher, and a passionate advocate for child-centered learning. Kozol is one of the most widely read and highly honored education writers in the nation. His first book, Death at an Early Age (1967), a description of his first year as a teacher in a Black community of Boston, received the National Book Award in Science, Philosophy, and Religion. Among his other major works are Rachel and Her Children, a study of homeless mothers and their children, which received the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, and Savage Inequalities, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992. His 1995 best-seller, Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation, received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in 1996, an honor previously granted to the works of Langston Hughes and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Ten years later, in The Shame of the Nation, a description of conditions that he found in nearly 60 public schools, Kozol wrote that inner-city children were more isolated racially than at any time since federal courts began dismantling the landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. The Shame of the Nation appeared on The New York Times bestseller list the week that it was published.