“What’s wrong with our children? Adults telling children to be honest while lying and cheating. Adults telling children to not be violent while marketing and glorifying violence… I believe that adult hypocrisy is the biggest problem children face in America.”
Marian Wright, the youngest of five children, grew up in Bennettsville, South Carolina, where her father was a Baptist minister. In 1960 she graduated from Spelman College in Atlanta; three years later she had a law degree from Yale.
The first black woman to be admitted to the Mississippi Bar, she directed the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund office in Jackson.
In 1968 she moved to Washington, D.C. to serve as counsel for the Poor People’s Campaign organized by Martin Luther King, Jr. That same year she married Peter Edelman, a former assistant to Robert F. Kennedy whom she had met during her years in Mississippi. She founded the Washington Research Project, a public interest law firm and parent body of the Children’s Defense Fund which she established in 1973. As founder, leader and principal spokesperson for the CDF, Mrs. Edelman worked to persuade Congress to overhaul foster care, support adoption, improve child care and protect children who are handicapped, homeless, abused or neglected. A philosophy of service absorbed during her childhood undergirds all her efforts. As she expresses it, “If you don’t like the way the world is, you have an obligation to change it. Just do it one step at a time.”
If the world does not always seem ready to follow her example, it has, at least, accorded her many honors and awards. She has received the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Prize, the Heinz Award, a MacArthur Foundation prize Fellowship, the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2000) and the Robert F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award for her writings. She is the author of seven books, including:
Families in Peril: An agenda for Social Change; The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours; and I’m Your Child, God: Prayers for Our Children. She holds 65 honorary degrees.
She continues to advocate youth pregnancy prevention, child-care funding, prenatal care, greater parental responsibility in teaching values and curtailing children’s exposure to the barrage of violent images transmitted by mass media.
Both Marian Wright Edelman and Truth teller Nancy Carlsson-Paige have advocated for children and the sacred period in life we know as early childhood.
A study of each of their lives would necessarily lead students to understand the importance of early childhood and the politics associated with it. We encourage teachers to use these portraits to allow students to fully embrace the issues both women present us with through their work and biographies.
In addition , the portrait and bio of Sandra Steingraber can be included , as students begin to explore the impact of environmental issues on young children. Sandra writes about this extensively in her book, Raising Elijah as well the articles which appear regularly in Orion Magazine. See her portrait page for links to this information.
No study of Marian Wright Edelman can be done without a thorough research of the Children's Defense Fund. Note: there are numerous videos of Marian Wright Edelman on this site that can and should be shared with students.
Marian Wright Edelman writes regularly for Huffington Post. Her short articles are packed with information about the conditions under which children live, what we can and should do about them and how current events and laws impact them.
A fabulous resource for learning more about her work.
When working with students and Marian Wright Edelman's portrait, we often discuss her quote in great depth. What are the things students see around them that they feel are representative of adult hypocrisy? Michael Moore has a blog site on his webpage that features the writing of high school students around the country. This could serve as a catalyst for conversation or even a model for something you'd create in your classroom.
