Editor 's note : Marian Wright Edelman is president of the Children 's Defense Fund , a nonprofit organization that advocates for policies to help children escape poverty , abuse and neglect and gain access to health care and education . Edelman was the first black woman admitted to the Mississippi bar and was a leader in the civil rights movement . Her latest book is `` The Sea Is So Wide And My Boat Is So Small : Charting a Course for the Next Generation . '' Marian Wright Edelman says many black babies enter the world with multiple strikes against them . ( CNN ) -- One of the most dangerous threats facing black America right now is quietly stealing our children at a young age . Incarceration is becoming the new American apartheid , and poor children of color are the fodder . So many poor black babies in rich America enter the world with multiple strikes against them : born without prenatal care , at low birthweight and to a poor , and poorly educated , teenage single mother and an absent father . At crucial points in their development after birth through adolescence , more risks pile on , making a successful transition to productive adulthood significantly less likely and involvement in the criminal justice system significantly more likely . This is America 's pipeline to prison , a trajectory that is funneling tens of thousands of youths down life paths that lead to marginalized lives , imprisonment and , often , premature death . Nationally , one in three black boys and one in 17 black girls born in 2001 is at risk of imprisonment during their lifetime . It 's time to sound a loud alarm about this threat to American unity and community , act to stop the growing criminalization of children at younger and younger ages , and tackle the unjust treatment of minority youths and adults in the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems with urgency and persistence . We must reduce detention and incarceration by increasing preventive supports and services children need , including access to comprehensive child health and mental health coverage , quality early childhood development programs like Early Head Start , and supports for parents including home visitation programs . And every child has to get an education that prepares him or her to succeed in the 21st-century economy . The failure to act now will reverse the hard-earned racial and social progress for which the Rev . Martin Luther King and so many others died and sacrificed . The urgent challenge for each of us and for our nation is to prevent this waste of our children 's lives and our nation 's future capabilities . Who are some of the black leaders coming up with solutions for saving our children ? People like Geoffrey Canada , president and CEO of the Harlem Children 's Zone , who recently spoke about his work to CNN 's Soledad O'Brien for the `` Black in America '' series . The Harlem Children 's Zone Project is a holistic system of education , social service and community-building programs designed to help the children and families in a 97-block area of Central Harlem from birth on , from classes on baby care and child development through preschool , intensive public charter schools and after-school activities right up to job training and college success programs . The HCZ Project 's two fundamental goals are to help children as early in their lives as possible and to create a critical mass of adults around them who understand what it takes to help them succeed . The evidence -- including new research on the success of HCZ 's Promise Academy charter schools in closing black-white student test score achievement gaps -- shows that HCZ 's comprehensive approach to saving Harlem 's children is working . I applaud the Obama administration 's plans to create 20 additional `` promise zones '' across the country . Connie Rice is another visionary leader working on solutions to the pipeline to prison crisis in Los Angeles and California . She is co-director of the Advancement Project , a policy , communications and legal `` action tank '' committed to racial justice . Rice is known for her unconventional approaches to tackling problems of inequity and exclusion , and she works on education , gang and violence prevention , and other serious concerns affecting the healthy development of young people . During her long career as a civil rights lawyer , including serving as co-director of the Los Angeles office of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc. , she won billions of dollars in policy changes and remedies , including a 1999 lawsuit that gained $ 750 million for school construction in Los Angeles that had been set to go to suburban school districts . Rice and her colleagues are finding innovative ways of dismantling some of the persistent structural inequalities that exist in America , and their successes help level the playing field for poor children of color . We need to celebrate , support and replicate the work of these kinds of leaders . Child poverty and neglect , racial disparities in systems that serve children , and the pipeline to prison are not acts of God . They are our nation 's immoral political and economic choices that can and must be changed with strong political , corporate , community and family leadership . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Marian Wright Edelman .
Marian ##na Edelman : Black youths at higher risk of going to prison . She says programs like the Children 's Zone are having strong results . Edelman : Traffic in children from birth could be the pipeline to prison .