Marian Wright Edelman - The Struggle for America's Conscience and Future

June 20, 1991 - Marian Wright Edelman, president and Founder of the Children's Defense Fund in Washington, D.C., giving commencement address at Hamline University in St. Paul. Edelman’s speech was titled "The Struggle for America's Conscience and Future.” She told the Hamline graduates that we are a morally lost nation, and that we must redefine national security. Marian Wright Edelman is a graduate of Spelman College and the Yale University Law School. In the mid-1960's she was the first black woman admitted to the Mississippi bar; she later directed a regional office of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund.