Marian Wright Edelman

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Marian Wright Edelman (1994)

Marian Wright Edelman (born June 6, 1939, in Bennettsville, South Carolina) is an American activist for the rights of children. She is president and founder of the Children's Defense Fund.

Her thinking was influenced by her father, Arthur Wright, a Baptist preacher who taught that Christianity required service in this world and by A. Philip Randolph.

A graduate of Spelman College and Yale Law School, Edelman worked for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Poor People's March on Washington, and on a variety of other civil rights and public interest causes before founding the Children's Defense Fund in 1973. She was the first black woman admitted to the Mississippi Bar.

Edelman received a LL.D. from Bates College in 1986. In 1995, she received the Community of Christ International Peace Award. She is a recipient of the Silver Buffalo Award, the highest adult award given by the Boy Scouts of America, and of the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism.

In an interview with Shelly R. Fredman on AlterNet, Howard Zinn suggests she would make a better Democratic Presidential Candidate than Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.[1]. She is also cited by Martin Peretz in the New Republic as "Hillary's closest sister and ideological soulmate."

She is married to Georgetown law professor, author and policy maker Peter Edelman, and has three sons.