12 | DECEMBER 31 • 2020 

CORRIE COLF CONTRIBUTING WRITER

IN 
THE
JEWS D
ON THE COVER

A

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 team-
mates 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 constitu-
tional right to literacy. 
“If the schools are bad and 
torn down, then the neigh-
borhood is bad and torn down,
” Hill said. 
“Then when there are schools being closed 

and incarceration centers being built, and 
then they’re looking at our test scores to pre-
dict, 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 edu-
cation?”
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 then-
Gov. Rick Snyder (later, Gov. Gretchen 
Whitmer became the lead named defen-
dant), claiming they were not taught how to 
read during their time in the low-perform-
ing 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 spearhead-
ing 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 import-
ant 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 democra-
cy 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-

Mark 

Rosenbaum

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.

The
Right
 to Read

ANTHONY LANZILOTE/BRIDGE MAGAZINE

DETROIT LITERACY GROUP