EDELMAN, Marian Wright 1939-

PERSONAL: Born June 6, 1939, in Bennettsville, SC; daughter of Arthur J. and Maggie (Bowen) Wright; married Peter Benjamin Edelman, July 14, 1968; children: Joshua Robert, Jonah Martin, Ezra Benjamin. Education: Attended University of Paris and University of Geneva, 1958-59; Spelman College, B.A., 1960; Yale University, LL.B., 1963.

ADDRESSES: Offıce—Children's Defense Fund, 122 C St. N.W., Washington, DC 20001.

CAREER: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc., New York, NY, staff attorney, 1963-64, director of office in Jackson, MS, 1964-68; partner of Washington Research Project of Southern Center for Public Policy, 1968-73; Children's Defense Fund, Washington, DC, founder and president, 1973—. W. E. B. Du Bois Lecturer at Harvard University, 1986. Member of Lisle Fellowship's U.S.-USSR Student Exchange, 1959; member of executive committee of Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), 1961-63; member of Operation Crossroads Africa Project in Ivory Coast, 1962; congressional and federal agency liaison for Poor People's Campaign, summer, 1968; director of Harvard University's Center for Law and Education, 1971-73. Member of Presidential Commission on Americans Missing and Unaccounted for in Southeast Asia (Woodcock Commission), 1977, United States-South Africa leadership Exchange Program, 1977, National Commission on the International Year of the Child, 1979, and President's Commission for a National Agenda for the Eighties, 1979; member of board of directors of Carnegie Council on Children, 1972-77, Aetna Life and Casualty Foundation, Citizens for Constitutional Concerns, U.S. Committee for UNICEF, and Legal Defense and Education Fund of the NAACP; member of board of trustees of Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Center, and Joint Center for Political Studies.

MEMBER: Council on Foreign Relations, Delta Sigma Theta (honorary member).

AWARDS, HONORS: Merrill scholar in Paris and Geneva, 1958-59; honorary fellow of Law School at University of Pennsylvania, 1969; Louise Waterman Wise Award, 1970; Presidential Citation, American Public Health Association, 1979; Outstanding Leadership Award, National Alliance of Black School Educators, 1979; Distinguished Service Award, National Association of Black Women Attorneys, 1979; National Award of Merit, National Council on Crime and Delinquency, 1979; named Washingtonian of the Year, 1979; Whitney M. Young Memorial Award, Washington Urban League, 1980; Professional Achievement Award, Black Enterprise magazine, 1980; Outstanding Leadership Achievement Award, National Women's Political Caucus and Black Caucus, 1980; Outstanding Community Service Award, National Hookup of Black Women, 1980; Woman of the Year Award, Big Sisters of America, 1980; Award of Recognition, American Academy of Pedodontics, 1981; Rockefeller Public Service Award, 1981; Gertrude Zimand Award, National Child Labor Committee, 1982; Florina Lasker Award, New York Civil Liberties Union, 1982; Anne Roe Award, Graduate School of Education at Harvard University, 1984; Roy Wilkins Civil Rights Award, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 1984; award from Women's Legal Defense Fund, 1985; Hubert H. Humphrey Award, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, 1985; fellow of MacArthur Foundation, 1985; Grenville Clark Prize from Dartmouth College, 1986; Compostela Award of St. James Cathedral, 1987; Gandhi Peace Award, 1989; Fordham Stein Prize, 1989; Murray-Green-Meany Award, AFL-CIO, 1989; Frontrunner Award, Sara Lee Corporation, 1990; Jefferson Award, American Institute for Public Service, 1991; recipient of more than thirty honorary degrees.

WRITINGS:

Families in Peril: An Agenda for Social Change, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1987.

The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours, Beacon Press (Boston, MA), 1992, with a new preface, 1994.

Guide My Feet: Prayers and Meditations on Loving and Working for Children, Beacon Press (Boston, MA), 1995.

Stand for Children, Hyperion Books for Children (New York, NY), 1998.

Lanterns: A Memoir of Mentors, HarperPerennial (New York, NY)), 1999.

I'm Your Child, God: Prayers for Children and Teenagers, Hyperion Books for Children (New York, NY), 2002.

Also author of School Suspensions: Are They Helping Children?, 1975, and Portrait of Inequality: Black and White Children in America, 1980. Contributor to books, including Raising Children in Modern America: Problems and Prospective Solutions, edited by Nathan B. Talbot, Little, Brown, 1975; and Toward New Human Rights: The Social Policies of the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, edited by David C. Warner, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin, 1977.

SIDELIGHTS: Dubbed "the 101st Senator on children's issues" by U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy, Marian Wright Edelman left her law practice in 1968, just after the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., to work toward a better future for American children. She was the first black woman to join the Mississippi Bar and had been a civil rights lawyer with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). "Convinced she could achieve more as an advocate than as a litigant for the poor," wrote Nancy Traver in Time, Edelman moved to Washington, D.C., and began to apply her researching and rhetorical skills in Congress. She promotes her cause with facts about teen pregnancies, poverty, and infant mortality and—with her Children's Defense Fund—has managed to obtain budget increases for family and child health care and education programs. In Ms. magazine Katherine Bouton described Edelman as "the nation's most effective lobbyist on behalf of children . . . an unparalleled strategist and pragmatist."

Edelman's book Families in Peril: An Agenda for Social Change was judged "a powerful and necessary document" of the circumstances of children by Washington Post reviewer Jonathan Yardley, and it urges support for poor mothers and children of all races. The book is based on the 1986 W. E. B. Du Bois Lectures that Edelman gave at Harvard University. In making her case for increased support for America's children, Edelman offers numerous statistics that paint a grim portrait of life for the country's poor. Don Wycliff, reviewing the book for the New York Times Book Review, questioned Edelman's solutions as overly dependent on government support and neglectful of parental responsibility for children: "Governmental exertions . . . are indispensable. But . . . Edelman doesn't satisfactorily address how [parents] can be induced to behave wisely and responsibly for their child's benefit." A Kirkus Review contributor, however, termed the book "graphic and eloquent."

In Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours, Edelman again deals with the problems and possible solutions of poverty and the neglect of children, in part by discussing her own experience as a parent. The book is divided into five sections: "A Family Legacy"; "Passing on the Legacy of Service"; "A Letter to My Sons"; "Twenty-five Lessons for Life"; and "Is the Child Safe?" Writing in the New York Times Book Review about the chapter "Twenty-five Lessons for Life," Clifton L. Taulbert commented, "In the twenty-five lessons for life that she presents here, she issues a call for parental involvement, a commitment of personal time on behalf of others, the primacy of service over self, and the assumption of individual responsibility for our nation's character."

Edelman's I'm Your Child, God: Prayers for Our Children follows in the footsteps of her previous collections of prayers, Guide My Feet: Prayers and Meditations on Loving and Working for Children. Divided into specific segments for younger children, young adults, and special occasions, the work features language that Booklist contributor Gillian Engberg described as at times "clunky and even banal." Nonetheless, the critic added, among the works Edelman assembles are some deeply "heartfelt selections." "She offers kids support, peace and empowerment in prayers," added a Publishers Weekly reviewer, the critic going on to state that I'm Your Child, God is "a book many will welcome."

Edelman once commented: "I have been an advocate for disadvantaged Americans throughout my professional career. The Children's Defense Fund, which I have been privileged to direct, has become one of the nation's most active organizations concerned with a wide range of children's and family issues, especially those which most affect America's children: our poorest Americans.

"Founded in 1968 as the Washington Research Project, the Children's Defense Fund monitors and proposes improvements in federal, state, and local budgets, legislative and administrative policies in the areas of child and maternal health, education, child care, child welfare, adolescent pregnancy prevention, youth employment, and family support systems. In 1983 the Children's Defense Fund initiated a major long-term national campaign to prevent teenage pregnancy and provide positive life options for youth. Since then, we have launched a multimedia campaign that includes transit advertisements, posters, and television and radio public service announcements, a national prenatal care campaign, and Child Watch coalitions in more than seventy local communities in thirty states to combat teen pregnancy.

"The Children's Defense Fund also has been a leading advocate in Congress, state legislatures, and courts for children's rights. For example, our legal actions blocked out-of-state placement of hundreds of Louisiana children in Texas institutions, guaranteed access to special education programs for tens of thousands of Mississippi's children, and represented the interests of children and their families before numerous federal administrative agencies."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Black Issues Book Review, January-February 2003, review of I'm Your Child, God: Prayers for Our Children, p. 71.

Booklist, October 1, 2002, Gillian Engberg, review of I'm Your Child, God, p. 340.

Ebony, July, 1987.

Harper's, February, 1993, p. 154.

Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 1987, p. 189; October 1, 2002, review of I'm Your Child, God, p. 1467.

Library Journal, March 1, 1987, p. 66.

Ms., July-August, 1987.

New Republic, March 4, 1996, p. 33.

Newsweek, June 10, 1996, p. 32.

New York Times Book Review, June 7, 1987, p. 12; August 23, 1992, p. 13.

Psychology Today, July-August, 1993, p. 26.

Publishers Weekly, October 28, 2002, review of I'mYour Child, God, p. 69.

School Library Journal, September, 1992, p. 290; December, 1992, p. 29; December 2002, Marge Louch-Wouters, review of I'm Your Child, God, p. 158.

Time, March 23, 1987.

Washington Post, March 4, 1987.

Washington Post Book World, April 19, 1992, p. 13.*