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Marian Wright Edelman, Educator and Activist to Give NCC Commencement Address

Marian Wright Edelman, Educator and Activist, to Give NCC Commencement Address

 

Marian Wright Edelman, activist, advocate, educator, and the founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund, will give the spring commencement address at Northampton Community College (NCC) on Thursday, May 26 at 6:30 p.m. at the Spartan Center of NCC’s Main Campus.  More than 960 graduates will receive their associate degrees, diplomas and certificates.     

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The Children's Defense Fund (CDF) is a non-profit child advocacy organization that has worked relentlessly since 1973 to ensure a level playing field for all children. It champions policies and programs that lift children out of poverty, protect them from abuse and neglect, and ensure their access to health care, quality education and a moral and spiritual foundation.

Edelman has devoted her life to human rights and the well-being of children and families.  Born the youngest of five children in Bennettsville, South Carolina, she graduated from Spelman College and Yale Law School.  In the mid-1960s, she became the first African American admitted to the Mississippi bar.  As director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund office in Jackson, Mississippi, she represented civil rights activists during the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964.  In 1968, she served as counsel for Martin Luther King’s Poor People’s Campaign.

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In addition to founding the Children’s Defense Fund, Edelman founded the Washington Research Project, a public interest law firm, and served as the director of the Center for Law and Education at Harvard University.  She was the first woman graduate to be elected a member of the Yale University Corporation.  She is nationally recognized as an advocate for Head Start. 

Her honors include the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award; the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Prize; the Heinz Award; a MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship; and more than 100 honorary degrees.

Edelman is the author of numerous books, most recently The Sea is So Wide, and My Boat is So Small: Charting a Course for the Next Generation.  She is active on many boards such as the Kennedy Library, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Robin Hood Foundation, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, and the Association to Benefit Children.

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