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Marian Wright Edelman
 Marian Wright Edelman |
Marian Wright Edelman was born in and grew up in Bennettsville, South Carolina, one of five children. Her father, Arthur Wright, was a Baptist preacher who taught his children that Christianity required service in this world and who was influenced by A. Phillip Randolph. He died when Marian was only fourteen, urging in his last words to her, “Don’t let anything get in the way of your education.”
Edelman went on to study at Spelman College, abroad on a Merrill scholarship, and she traveled to the Soviet Union with a Lisle fellowship. When she returned to Spelman in 1959, she became involved in the civil rights movement, inspiring her to drop her plans to enter the foreign service, and instead to study law. She studied law at Yale and worked as a student on a project to register African-American voters in Mississippi.
In 1963, after graduating from Yale Law School, Edelman worked first in New York for the NAACP Legal and Defense Fund, and then in Mississippi for the same organization. There, she became the first African-American woman to practice law. During her time in Mississippi, she worked on racial justice issues connected with the civil rights movement, and she also helped get a Head Start program established in her community.
During a tour by Robert Kennedy of Mississippi’s poverty-ridden Delta slums, Marian met Peter Edelman, an assistant to Kennedy, and the next year she moved to Washington, D.C., to marry him and to work for social justice in the center of America’s political scene. They had three sons.
In Washington, Edelman continued her work, helping to get the Poor People’s Campaign organized. She also began to focus more on issues relating to child development and children in poverty.
Edelman established the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) in 1973 as a voice for poor, minority and handicapped children. She served as a public speaker on behalf of these children, and also as a lobbyist in Congress, as well as president and administrative head of the organization.
Edelman also published her ideas in several books. The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours was a surprising success.
—Courtesy of About.com’s “Women’s History”
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