Marian Wright Edelman
Defender of the Rights of African-Americans, Children and Families
Jul 4, 2008
Marian Wight Edelman was born on June 6, 1939 in Bennettsville, South Carolina, one of the five children of African-American Baptist preacher Arthur Wright and Maggie Bowen Wight. As a child, she experienced living in a small, socially segregated town where she attended racially divided public schools.
After completing her studies and becoming the first Aftrican-American woman lawyer in Mississippi, she married Peter Edelman, an assistant to Robert Kennedy in 1968. They had three sons.
Education
Marian Wright Edelman's father died when she was fourteen-years-old and his last words to her were, “Don’t let anything get in the way of your education.” After graduating from high school, Marian Wright Edelman went on to study at the historic black women’s Spelman College, earning a Merrill Scholarship to study abroad. She later was awarded a Lisle fellowship that gave her the opportunity to visit the Soviet Union. Upon returning to Spelman in 1959, she became interested in the civil rights movement and changed her plans from entering the foreign service to the study of law. She attended Yale University and as a student worked to register African-American voters in Mississippi.
Marian Wright Edelman Activism
After graduating from law school in 1963, she first worked for the NAACP Legal and Defense Fund in New York and Mississippi. While in Mississippi, as the first African-American woman to be admitted to the bar in that state, she worked on social justice and also helped to get a Head Start Program set up in her community.
Moving to Washington, D.C. after her marriage to Peter Edelman, she helped to organize Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Poor People’s Campaign. She later founded the Washington Research Project, a public interest law firm and also became interested in issues related to childhood development and poverty-stricken children.
Marian Wright Edelman Founder of the Children’s Defense Fund
Marian Wright Edelman founded the Children’s Defense Fund in 1973 for the benefit of poor, minority and handicapped children. It served as an advocacy and research center for children’s issues, documenting problems and possible solutions to children in need. It was financed entirely with private funds. Through her efforts, Congress was persuaded to overhaul foster care, support adoption, improve child care and protect children who are handicapped, homeless, abused or neglected. Through CDF, Edelman brought attention to the problems of foster care, teen pregnancy and childcare.She now serves on the Robin Hood Foundation Board, a charitable organization that helps to alleviate poverty-related problems in New York City. She expressed her philosophy by saying, “If you don’t like the way the world is, you have an obligation to change it. Just do it one step at a time.”
Marian Wright Edelman Awards and Honors
Marian Wright Edelman has been honored by receiving many awards including, the 1991 ABC Person of the Week as the “Children’s Champion”, the MacArthur “genius” award, the Barnard Medal of Distinction, and honorary LL.D from Bates College, the 1995 Community of Christ International Peace Award, and the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism and more than 65 honorary degrees.
Source: Children’s Defense Fund Biography of Marian Wright Edelman
Books by Marian Wright Edelman:
Families in Peril: An Agenda for Social Change
The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours
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