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Article: Children's Defense Fund
- Article from:
- Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood in History and Society
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CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Children's Defense Fund
The Children's Defense Fund (CDF) was founded in 1973 as an outgrowth of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The CDF quickly became a powerful advocacy agency for impoverished and at risk children, more effective than the U.S. Children's Bureau ever was. Marion Wright Edelman, its founder and vigorous leader, was born June 6, 1939, in Bennettsville, South Carolina, the daughter of an African-American Baptist minister, Arthur Bennett, who taught that Christianity necessitated service to the world. The elder Bennett idolized A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and a hero of the civil rights movement. Edelman ...