Edelman, Marian Wright (1939-…), is an American lawyer and an activist for civil rights and children’s rights. She became the founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) in 1973. The Children’s Defense Fund is a nonprofit organization that advances the rights and interests of children in the United States. Edelman was the first black woman admitted to the practice of law in Mississippi , in 1964.
Marian Wright Edelman was born on June 6, 1939, in Bennettsville, in northeastern South Carolina . She became active in civil rights during college, when she was arrested for taking part in a sit-in protest in 1960. Edelman graduated from Spelman College in Atlanta , Georgia , in 1960 and the Yale Law School in New Haven , Connecticut , in 1963. She began her career working for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Legal Defense Fund in New York and Mississippi.
In 1968, Edelman began working as a lawyer for the Poor People’s Campaign, a human rights group founded by the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1968, she founded the Washington Research Project, which lobbied the United States Congress for the needs of children. The project became the Children’s Defense Fund in 1973. Edelman stepped down as president of the Children’s Defense Fund in 2018, but she continued to work with the organization.
Edelman received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000. She has written many books, including The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours (1992).
