Marian Wright Edelman

Biography provided by participant

Marian Wright Edelman is the President of the Children's Defense Fund, a non-profit child advocacy organization that has worked relentlessly for 35 years to ensure a level playing field for all children. A graduate of Spelman College and Yale Law School, she 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, Miss. 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, and in 1973, began the Children's Defense Fund. 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.