Marian Wright Edelman: first mom; activist asks America to stand for children

Ebony, May, 1996 by Richette L. Haywood

Marian Wright Edelman lives in the eye of the storm. Struggling to guide the winds of change. Struggling to make a difference. Motivated by one thing: an insatiable desire to leave this place called America better than the way she found it. Not necessarily for herself, though that would be a fair exchange, but for the children. Children whose voices so often go unheard by adults and whose cries drive this preacher's daughter to places that most of us could not imagine.

"I would never do anything else," says Edelman from her eighth-floor office in the Children's Defense Fund, the Washington, D.C.-based child advocacy organization she founded in 1973 and, without government aid, transformed into the nation's No. 1 child advocacy organization. "I'm doing what I think I was put on this earth to do. And I'm really grateful to have something that I'm passionate about and that I think is profoundly important."

Hers is not powertown rhetoric, Washingtonspeak political mumbo jumbo. You can tell by the fire in the eyes. The fire is the reason why she has been embraced as America's First Mom by everyone, across the board, no matter the color, and its why she is considered the country's most effective child advocate. When she speaks about children, Edelman's eyes burn with the fervor of a woman -a wife and mother of three grown sons - who sees what she calls the gravest assault on the rights of children 50 years, and she is driven to stop it. That's why she has embarked on the biggest fight of her life, trying to organize and mobilize hundreds of thousands of Americans to come to Washington, D.C., on June 1 to stand for the children.

"As tough as times are and as hard as families are struggling for children, each and every one of us can do better," says Edelman. "It is time to hold ourselves to a higher standard in our homes, in our communities, and in our government at all levels. And that is why we are coming together at the Lincoln Memorial on June 1st for Stand For Children Day."

Edelman's unrelenting drive to make America take better care of her children grows out of her lifelong effort to improve herself. Born in racially segregated Bennettsville, S.C., she often refers to and relies on the lessons learned there from her wise, God-fearing, poor but honest elders who made children feel valued and important. "We were told that the world had a lot of problems, but that Black people had an extra lot of problems, and that we were able and obligated to struggle and change them; that being poor was no excuse for not achieving@ and that extra intellectual and material gifts brought with them the privilege and responsibility of sharing with others less fortunate. In sum, we learned that service is the rent we pay for living. It is the very purpose of life and not something you do in your spare time," she writes in her best-selling book Measure of Our Success: A Letter To My Children and Yours.

Since she began her career in the mid-'60s after graduating from Spelman College and Yale Law School, she has made children's welfare her life's mission. In doing so, she has been called the country's 101st senator because of the impact her work has had on Congress. And when it comes to the welfare of children, Edelman is uncompromising promising. Her motto, as well as the motto of the Children's Defense Fund and its sister organization, The Black Community Crusade for Children, is "leave no child behind."

"When Jesus Christ asked little children to come to him, he didn't say only rich children, or White children, or children with two-parent families, or children who didn't have a mental or physical handicap. He said, `Let all children come unto me,'" says Edelman, who continuously peppers her conversations with biblical phrases.

In defense of "all children," she has been willing to take on anybody. No matter who they are. Or how powerful they are. Where others see futility in trying to get the National Governors Association or this particular Congress or the president, for that matter, to do the right thing on welfare reform, she calls for national mobilization.

"For all our progress, we are sitting here in 1996 debating whether or not we can beat the governors' proposal, which would take away health care for 4 million children instead of debating how we are going to get health care to the 10 million children who already don't have it. We're sitting here debating whether or not were going to have a welfare reform plan that will make another 1.5 million children poor rather than talking about how do we deal with the highest child poverty rate in the industrialized world. Something is wrong. we've got to change the debate," asserts Edelman.

If anyone can change the debate, it is Marian Wright Edelman, who hopes thousands, if not millions, will work their way through the streets of America to the Lincoln Memorial in the nation's capital for a spectacle such as has not been seen since, well, ever.

"The call is to everybody," says Edelman. "Parents, grandparents, community and religious leaders ... It's time to come and stand together across race, class, faith and region, and say we may not be able to agree on a lot of things, but we're going to agree on not doing harm to kids, and we're going to provide them with what they need."