Reflections from a lifetime fighting to end child poverty

What does it take to build a national movement? In a captivating conversation with TEDWomen curator Pat Mitchell, Marian Wright Edelman reflects on her path to founding the Children's Defense Fund in 1973 -- from the early influence of growing up in the segregated American South to her activism with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. -- and shares how growing older has only made her more radical.

Pat Mitchell: I know you don't like
that "legend" business.

Marian Wright Edelman: I don't.

(Laughter)

PM: Why not, Marian?

Because you are somewhat of a legend.

You've been doing this for a long time,

and you're still there
as founder and president.

MWE: Well, because my daddy raised us
and my mother raised us to serve,

and we are servant-leaders.

And it is not about
external things or labels,

and I feel like the luckiest
person in the world

having been born at the intersection
of great needs and great injustices

and great opportunities to change them.

So I just feel very grateful

that I could serve and make a difference.

PM: What a beautiful way of saying it.

(Applause)

You grew up in the American South,

and like all children,

a lot of who you became
was molded by your parents.

Tell me: What did they teach you
about movement-building?

MWE: I had extraordinary parents.
I was so lucky.

My mother was the best
organizer I ever knew.

And she always insisted,
even back then, on having her own dime.

She started her dairy
so that she could have her penny,

and that sense of independence
has certainly been passed on to me.

My daddy was a minister,
and they were real partners.

And my oldest sibling is a sister,

I'm the youngest,
and there are three boys in between.

But I always knew I was
as smart as my brothers.

I always was a tomboy.

I always had the same
high aspirations that they had.

But most importantly,
we were terribly blessed,

even though we were growing up

in a very segregated
small town in South Carolina --

we knew it was wrong.

I always knew, from the time
I was four years old,

that I wasn't going to accept
being put into slots.

But Daddy and Mama always
had the sense that it was not us,

it was the outside world,

but you have the capacity
to grow up to change it,

and I began to do that very early on.

But most importantly,
they were the best role models,

because they said: if you see a need,

don't ask why somebody doesn't do it.

See what you can do.

There was no home for the aged
in our hometown.

And Reverend Reddick, who had what we know
now, 50 years later, as Alzheimer's,

and he began to wander the streets.

And so Daddy and Mama figured out
he needed a place to go,

so we started a home for the aged.

Children had to cook and clean and serve.

We didn't like it at the time,

but that's how we learned
that it was our obligation

to take care of those
who couldn't take care of themselves.

I had 12 foster sisters and brothers.

My mother took them in after we left home,
and she took them in before we left home.

And again, whenever you see a need,
you try to fulfill it.

God runs, Daddy used to say,
a full employment economy.

(Laughter)

And so if you just follow the need,

you will never lack for something to do
or a real purpose in life.

And every issue that the Children's
Defense Fund works on today

comes out of my childhood
in a very personal way.

Little Johnny Harrington,
who lived three doors down from me,

stepped on a nail;
he lived with his grandmother,

got tetanus, went to the hospital,
no tetanus shots, he died.

He was 11 years old.

I remember that.

An accident in front of our highway,

turns out to have been
two white truck drivers

and a migrant family
that happened to be black.

We all ran out to help.

It was in the front of a church,
and the ambulance came,

saw that the white
truck drivers were not injured,

saw the black migrant workers were,

turned around and left them.

I never forgot that.

And immunizations
was one of the first things

I worked on at the Children's Defense Fund

to make sure that every child gets
immunized against preventable diseases.

Unequal schools ...

(Applause)

Separate and unequal,

hand-me-downs from the white schools.

But we always had books in our house.

Daddy was a great reader.

He used to make me
read every night with him.

I'd have to sit for 15 or 20 minutes.

One day I put a "True Confessions"
inside a "Life Magazine"

and he asked me to read it out loud.

I never read a "True Confessions" again.

(Laughter)

But they were great readers.

We always had books
before we had a second pair of shoes,

and that was very important.

And although we had hand-me-down
books for the black schools

and hand-me-down everythings,

it was a great need.

He made it clear that reading
was the window to the outside world,

and so that was a great gift from them.

But the reinforced lesson was that God
runs a full employment economy,

and that if you just follow the need,

you will never lack for a purpose in life,

and that has been so for me.

We had a very segregated small town.

I was a rebel from the time
I was four or five.

I went out to a department store

and there was "white"
and "black" water signs,

but I didn't know that
and didn't pay much attention to that,

and I was with one
of my Sunday school teachers.

I drank out of the wrong water fountain,

and she jerked me away,
and I didn't know what had happened,

and then she explained to me
about black and white water.

I didn't know that, and after that,

I went home, took my little
wounded psyche to my parents,

and told them what had happened,
and said, "What's wrong with me?"

And they said,
"It wasn't much wrong with you.

It's what's wrong with the system."

And I used to go then secretly
and switch water signs

everywhere I went.

(Laughter)

And it felt so good.

(Applause)

PM: There is no question
that this legend is a bit of a rebel,

and has been for a long time.

So you started your work as an attorney
and with the Civil Rights Movement,

and you worked with Dr. King
on the original Poor People's Campaign.

And then you made
this decision, 45 years ago,

to set up a national advocacy
campaign for children.

Why did you choose that
particular service, to children?

MWE: Well, because so many of the things
that I saw in Mississippi

and across the South

had to do with children.

I saw children with bloated
bellies in this country

who were close to starvation,

who were hungry,

who were without clothes,

and nobody wanted to believe

that there were children
who were starving,

and that's a slow process.

And nobody wanted to listen.

Every congressman
that would come to Mississippi,

I'd say, "Go see," and most of them
didn't want to do anything about it.

But I saw grinding poverty.

The state of Mississippi wanted,
during voter registration efforts --

and with outside white kids coming in
to help black citizens register to vote --

they wanted everybody to leave the state,
so they were trying to starve them out.

And they switched
from free food commodities

to food stamps that cost two dollars.

People had no income, and nobody
in America wanted to believe

that there was anybody
in America without any income.

Well, I knew hundreds of them,
thousands of them.

And malnutrition
was becoming a big problem.

And so one of these days
came Dr. King down

on a number of things we were fighting
to get the Head Start program --

which the state
of Mississippi turned down --

refinanced.

And he went into a center

that the poor community
was running without any help,

and he saw a teacher carve up an apple
for eight or 10 children,

and he had to run out,
because he was in tears.

He couldn't believe it.

But only when Robert Kennedy
decided he would come --

I had gone to testify
about the Head Start program,

because they were attacking.

And I asked, please,
come and see yourself,

and when you come and see,

see hungry people
and see starving children.

And they came, and he brought the press,

and that began to get the movement going.

But they wanted to push
all the poor people to go north

and to get away from being voters.

And I'm proud of Mike Espy.

Even though he lost last night,
he'll win one of these days.

(Applause)

But you wouldn't have seen
such grinding poverty,

and the outside white kids
who'd come in to help register voters

in the 1964 Summer Project
where we lost those three young men.

But once they left, the press left,

and there was just massive need,

and people were trying
to push the poor out.

And so, you know, Head Start came,

and we applied for it,
because the state turned it down.

And that's true of a lot of states
that don't take Medicaid these days.

And we ran the largest
Head Start program in the nation,

and it changed their lives.

They had books that had children
who looked like them in it,

and we were attacked all over the place.

But the bottom line

was that Mississippi
gave birth to the Children's Defense Fund

in many ways,

and it also occurred to me that children

and preventive investment,

and avoiding costly care

and failure and neglect,

was a more strategic way to proceed.

And so the Children's Defense Fund

was born out of
the Poor People's Campaign.

But it was pretty clear
that whatever you called

black independent or brown independent

was going to have
a shrinking constituency.

And who can be mad at a two-month-old baby
or at a two-year-old toddler?

A lot of people can be.

They don't want to feed them,
neither, from what we've seen.

But it was the right judgment to make.

And so out of the privilege of serving

as the Poor People's Campaign
coordinator for policy

for two years, and there were two of them,

and it was not a failure,

because the seeds of change get planted

and have to have people
who are scut workers and follow up.

And I'm a good scut worker
and a persistent person.

And you know, as a result,

I would say that all those people
on food stamps today

ought to thank those poor people
in the mud in Resurrection City.

But it takes a lot of follow-up,
detailed work -- and never going away.

PM: And you've been doing it for 45 years,

and you've seen some amazing outcomes.

What are you proudest of
out of the Children's Defense Fund?

MWE: Well, I think the children now
have sort of become a mainstream issue.

We have got lots of new laws.

Millions of children are getting food.

Millions of children
are getting a head start.

Millions of children
are getting Head Start

and have gotten a head start,

and the Child Health
Insurance Program, CHIP,

Medicaid expansions for children.

We've been trying to reform
the child welfare system for decades.

We finally got a big
breakthrough this year,

and it says, be ready with the proposals
when somebody's ready to move,

and sometimes it takes five years,
10 years, 20 years, but you're there.

I've been trying to keep children
out of foster care and out of institutions

and with their families,
with preventive services.

That got passed.

But there are millions
of children who have hope,

who have access to early childhood.

Now, we are not finished,

and we are not going to ever feel finished

until we end child poverty
in the richest nation on earth.

It's just ridiculous
that we have to be demanding that.

(Applause)

PM: And there are so many of the problems
in spite of the successes,

and thank you for going through
some of them, Marian --

the Freedom Schools,

the generations of children now

who have gone through
Children's Defense Fund programs.

But when you look around the world,

in this country, the United States,
and in other countries,

there are still so many problems.

What worries you the most?

MWE: What worries me is how irresponsible
we adults in power have been

in passing on a healthier earth.

And it worries me when I read
the "Bulletin of Atomic Scientists"

and see now that we are
two minutes from midnight,

and that's gotten closer.

We have put our future

and our children's future
and safety at risk

in a world that is still
too much governed by violence.

We must end that.

We must stop investing in war and start
investing in the young and in peace,

and we are really so far away
from doing that.

(Applause)

And I don't want my grandchildren

to have to fight
these battles all over again,

and so I get more radical.

The older I get, the more radical I get,

because there are just some things
that we as adults have to do

for the next generations.

And I looked at
the sacrifices of Mrs. Hamer

and all those people in Mississippi

who risked their lives
to give us a better life.

But the United States
has got to come to grips

with its failure to invest
in its children,

and it's the Achilles' heel
of this nation.

How can you be one of the biggest
economies in the world

and you let 13.2 million children
go live in poverty,

and you let children go homeless

when you've got the means to do it?

We've got to rethink
who we are as a people,

be an example for the world.

There should be no poverty.

In fact, we want to say we're going
to end poverty in the world.

Just start at home.

And we've made real progress,

but it's such hard work,

and it's going to be our Achilles' heel.

We should stop giving more tax cuts,

sorry folks, to billionaires
rather than to babies

and their health care.

We should get our priorities straight.

(Applause)

That's not right,
and it's not cost-effective.

And the key to this country is going
to be an educated child population,

and yet we've got so many children

who cannot read or write
at the most basic levels.

We're investing in the wrong things,

and I wouldn't be upset
about anybody having one billion,

10 billion [US dollars],

if there were no hungry children,

if there were no homeless children,

if there were no uneducated children.

And so it's really about
what does it mean to live

and lead this life.

Why were we put on this earth?

We were put on this earth
to make things better

for the next generations.

And here we're worrying
about climate change

and global warming.

And we're looking at, again,
I constantly cite --

I look at that "Bulletin
of Atomic Scientists" every year.

And it says now:
"Two minutes to midnight."

Are we out of our minds, adults,

about passing on a better a world
to our children?

That's what our purpose is,
to leave a better world for everybody,

and the concept of enough for everybody.

There should be
no hungry children in this world

with the rich wealth that we have.

And so I can't think of a bigger cause,

and I think that I'm driven by my faith.

And it's been a privilege to serve,

but I always had the best
role models in the world.

Daddy always said God
runs a full employment economy,

and that if you just follow the need,

you'll never lack for a purpose in life.

And I watched the partnership --
because my mother was a true partner.

I always knew I was
as smart as my brothers, at least.

And we always knew that we were not
just to be about ourselves,

but that we were here to serve.

PM: Well, Marian, I want to say,
on behalf of all the world's children,

thank you for your passion,

your purpose and your advocacy.

(Applause)