40 years after 'Reading Rainbow,' LeVar Burton is still fighting for literacy
LOS ANGELES — Sitting in a booth at a Hollywood coffee shop across from LeVar Burton, there's no denying the passion in his eyes when he talks about literacy and how reading is not only a tool that unlocks doors to success but also a civil right.
Burton is one of the executive producers behind the documentary "The Right to Read," directed by Jenny Mackenzie. The movie, which premiered last weekend at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, follows NAACP activist and educator Kareem Weaver, first-grade teacher Sabrina Causey and two American families that are all fighting for public school curricula based in the science of reading.
Burton boarding the movie was "fate," say Mackenzie and Burton. As the host and executive producer of "Reading Rainbow," the educational PBS children's show that premiered in 1983, he influenced generations of young minds. Burton also portrayed Geordi La Forge, who affected a different age group with "Star Trek: The Next Generation," and Kunta Kinte, a defiant slave in "Roots: The Saga of an American Family." Burton, and these characters he's synonymous
