Circle 050: Marian Wright Edelman and Crocker Snow, Jr., Defending Our Children, December 2, 1987

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Attorney Marian Wright Edelman is the Founder and current President of the Children's Defense Fund (CDF) in Washington, D.C. The Fund's mission is to encourage "preventive investment" in children before they get sick, drop out of school, suffer too-early pregnancy or family breakdown or get into trouble. Edelman has been acclaimed as the "most effective social advocate in the country." Her dedication was honed in her native Bennettsville, South Carolina. As the youngest of five, her mother and father nurtured, in a religious family environment, a commitment to service. She graduated from Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia in 1960 (now Chairman of Spelman's Board of Trustees) and Yale University Law School in 1963. After Yale, she cut her "advocacy-teeth" as head of the Mississippi NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. In 1971, TIME Magazine named her as one of America's 200 young leaders. This year TIME described her as one of Washington's most unusual lobbyists "whose effectiveness depends as much on her adroit use of statistics as on moral suasion." Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy described Edelman as the "101st Senator on children's issues." She has written a hard-hitting book, "Families In Peril: An Agenda For Social Change". Attorney Edelman says she simply wants to know how a public policy affects "poor kids, minority kids, handicapped and homeless kids." There is time and devotion in her life for her husband, Attorney Peter Edelman, a Georgetown University Law professor and three teenage sons.

Crocker Snow, JR. is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of WorldPaper, a Boston-based publication dealing with international affairs that features the writings of top journalists who are native to the regions about which they write. WorldPaper appears as a monthly supplement in national newspapers and magazines in 22 countries. Before launching WorldPaper in 1979, he was the national and foreign editor, chief foreign correspondent and assistant to the publisher of The Boston Globe. Mr. Snow was a Pulitzer Prize nominee for foreign reporting in Asia in 1974 and 1976. A graduate of Harvard University, he worked for Newsweek, Die Deutsche WSelle , WGBH and received his masters degree as an Edward R. Murrow Fellow at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

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