President Barack Obama has appointed Marian Wright Edelman, co-founder and longtime president of the Children’s Defense Fund, as a member of the President’s Advisory Board on Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
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971 to 1973, she served as Director of the Center for Law and Education at Harvard University. From 1968 to 1973, Ms. Edelman worked as a Field Foundation Fellow and Founder of the Washington Research Project of the Southern Center for Public Policy.
In 1968, Ms. Edelman was a Congressional and Federal Agency Liaison for the Poor People’s Campaign. From 1964 to 1968, Ms. Edelman served as the Director of the Jackson, Mississippi chapter of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
Earlier in her career, she served as a Staff Attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in New York. Ms. Edelman received a B.A. from Spelman College and an LL.B. from Yale Law School.