In 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression, Rosa Lee Cunningham's grandparents and parents gave up their North Carolina sharecropping life for an uncertain journey north. Rosa Lee is the link between past and present, between a world that has disappeared and the one that her children and grandchildren face today in Washington. Her life spans a half-century of hardship in blighted neighborhoods not far from the majestic buildings where policy-makers have largely failed in periodic efforts to break the cycle of poverty.

Many of Rosa Lee's relatives, including two of her eight children, managed to secure footholds in the mainstream of American society; their relative success makes it all the more important to try to understand Rosa Lee's life. Although her story is discomforting and disturbing, she wants it told. "Maybe I can help somebody not follow in my footsteps," she says. That story -- of the choices she had and the choices she made -- offers a chance to understand what statistics only suggest: the interconnections of racism, poverty, illiteracy, drug abuse and crime, and why these conditions persist from generation to generation.

This series of articles grew out of Washington Post reporter Leon Dash's reporting on these interrelationships. It was edited by Steve Luxenberg, The Post's assistant managing editor for special projects. The articles were published daily from Sunday, Sept. 18 through Sunday, Sept. 25.