History
CDF grew out of the Civil Rights Movement under the leadership of Marian Wright Edelman who remains its President. CDF traces its heritage to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and his Poor People’s Campaign that fought for social and economic justice for all in the 1960s.
Mrs. Edelman—a graduate of Spelman College and Yale Law School—witnessed abject poverty first-hand in the Mississippi Delta and worked with Dr. King and Senator Robert Kennedy in the 1960s to help the millions of poor people in America. Mrs. Edelman then moved to Washington, D.C., and founded CDF to continue Dr. King’s call for justice for the poor and to ensure a level playing field for all children in America.
CDF is headquartered in Washington, D.C., and has offices in several states around the country: California, Minnesota, New York, Louisiana, Ohio, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. CDF programs operate in 24 states and the National Outreach staff also works on the ground and with partners in all 50 states.
Since its founding, CDF has helped pass several critical pieces of legislation, like the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) and the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act and programs involving issues of disabled children, early childhood education, health care and child welfare; ran several public awareness campaigns including the Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Campaign and the gun violence prevention campaign. CDF has also published a number of reports, including the State of America’s Children, educating the public on the issues facing children.
Read more about this topic: Children's Defense Fund
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“No one can understand Paris and its history who does not understand that its fierceness is the balance and justification of its frivolity. It is called a city of pleasure; but it may also very specially be called a city of pain. The crown of roses is also a crown of thorns. Its people are too prone to hurt others, but quite ready also to hurt themselves. They are martyrs for religion, they are martyrs for irreligion; they are even martyrs for immorality.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.”
—Henry Ford (1863–1947)
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)