Marian Wright Edelman: ‘Reading is the key to everything else’

At one time, Marian Wright Edelman was not allowed entry into the library in her hometown of Bennettsville because of the color of her skin.

Now it bears her name, and the Marian Wright Edelman Public Library is only one testament to the legacy of Edelman, a prominent national activist who founded and now serves as president of the Children’s Defense Fund.

A graduate of Spelman College and Yale Law School, the 76-year-old directed the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in Mississippi and worked for Dr. Martin Luther King’s Poor People’s Campaign in Washington, D.C., where she founded the Children’s Defense Fund in 1973.

In 2010, the Marian Wright Edelman Public Library was opened in Marlboro County.

“I’m deeply moved,” Edelman told The State in 2004, when fundraising for the library began. It’s “a symbol for how far we have come, and it is also a symbol of what my family and all of us feel is important for every child – because reading is the key to everything else.”

Among Edelman’s list of awards and accomplishments: 2000 Presidential Medal of Freedom, Robert F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award, 1988 Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism and1985 MacArthur Fellowship.

This story was originally published November 3, 2015 at 11:23 AM with the headline "Marian Wright Edelman: ‘Reading is the key to everything else’."