Marian
Wright Edelman
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Marian
Wright Edelman, Founder and Chief Executive
Officer of the Children's Defense Fund
(CDF), has been an advocate for disadvantaged
Americans for her entire professional
life. Under her leadership, CDF has become
the nation’s strongest voice for
children and families. The mission of
the Children's Defense Fund is to Leave
No Child Behind® and to ensure every
child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a
Fair Start, a Safe Start, and a Moral
Start in life and successful passage to
adulthood with the help of caring families
and communities.
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Mrs.
Edelman, a graduate of Spelman College and Yale
Law School, began her career in the mid-60s
when, as the first black woman admitted to the
Mississippi Bar, she directed the NAACP Legal
Defense and Educational Fund office in Jackson,
Mississippi. In l968, she moved to Washington,
D.C., as counsel for the Poor People's Campaign
that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. began organizing
before his death. She founded the Washington
Research Project, a public interest law firm
and the parent body of the Children's Defense
Fund. For two years she served as the Director
of the Center for Law and Education at Harvard
University and in l973 began CDF.
Mrs. Edelman served on the Board of Trustees
of Spelman College which she chaired from 1976
to 1987 and was the first woman elected by alumni
as a member of the Yale University Corporation
on which she served from 1971 to 1977. She has
received many honorary degrees and awards including
the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Prize, the
Heinz Award, and a MacArthur Foundation Prize
Fellowship. In 2000, she received the Presidential
Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest
civilian award, and the Robert F. Kennedy Lifetime
Achievement Award for her writings which include
seven books: Families in Peril: An Agenda for
Social Change; The Measure of Our Success: A
Letter to My Children and Yours; Guide My Feet:
Meditations and Prayers on Loving and Working
for Children; Stand for Children; Lanterns:
A Memoir of Mentors; Hold My Hand: Prayers for
Building a Movement to Leave No Child Behind;
and I'm Your Child, God: Prayers for Our Children.
She is a board member of the Robin Hood Foundation,
the Association to Benefit Children, City Lights
School, and Outward Bound and is a member of
the Council on Foreign Relations, the American
Philosophical Society, the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences, and the Institute of Medicine
of the National Academy of Sciences.
Marian Wright Edelman is married to Peter Edelman,
a Professor at Georgetown Law School. They have
three sons, Joshua, Jonah, and Ezra, and two
granddaughters, Ellika and Zoe.
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