Press
Highlights

“NPR’s Audie Cornish talks with Juan Martinez, one of the many thousands of students the philanthropist Eugene Lang helped send to college. Lang died over the weekend.”

“Eugene Lang, who died Saturday at 98, was already a very successful man on the day in June 1981 when he began to change history in a small but powerful way.

Invited to give a sixth-grade graduation speech at his childhood alma mater, PS 121 in East Harlem, he learned on his way to the podium that three-quarters of the children wouldn’t finish high school — and scrapped his prepared ‘banalities’ about hard work.”

The I Have A Dream Foundation will celebrate its 35th anniversary on Thursday, June 9, with its annual Spirit of the Dream gala at the Pierre Hotel in New York City.

This year’s honorees are philanthropists and education advocates Lauran & Justin Tuck, founders of Tuck’s R.U.S.H. (Read, Understand, Succeed, and Hope) for Literacy; U.S. Diplomat and member of the original 1981 ‘I Have A Dream’ class, Juan Martinez Esq; and the CBS Corp. The gala will be hosted by Bill Whitaker of CBS’s 60 Minutes.