Marian Wright Edelman
Marian Wright Edelman was born in Bennettsville in South Carolina, USA. A graduate of Spelman College and Yale Law School, she was the first African American woman to be admitted to the Mississippi Bar. In 1968, she became counsel for the Poor People's Campaign, initiated by Martin Luther King Jr. In 1973, she founded the Children's Defense Fund, a not-for-profit child advocacy organisation of which she remains president. Edelman's work has been widely recognised; among many awards, she is a recipient of the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism, a MacArthur Foundation fellowship and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.