The Kitchen Table That Fed a Neighborhood

Margaret Alvarez set one extra plate at her kitchen table in 1987. That was all — one plate for a boy named DeShawn who couldn't read past a second-grade level. She prayed a simple prayer: "Lord, just help this child pass his reading test." DeShawn passed. Then he brought his cousin. The cousin brought a friend. Within six months, Margaret's kitchen held eight children every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, hunched over phonics worksheets between plates of buttered cornbread.…