Conferences
Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund, was the keynote speaker at the College of Education’s 20th annual Benjamin E. Mays Lecture. Held at Georgia State University’s Rialto Center for the Arts, Edelman discussed trends in urban education.
“It is crucial that we address today’s educational crisis that America’s children face,” Edelman said. “Many of our children can’t read at grade level and our schools are now arresting children for infractions that used to be dealt with in the principal’s office. This isn’t just a problem for students, but a problem that affects all of our communities.”Being an advocate for disadvantaged Americans for her entire professional life. Under her leadership, the Children’s Defense Fund has become the nation’s strongest voice for children and families.
A graduate of Spelman College and Yale Law School, Edelman began her career in the mid-60s when, as the first black woman admitted to the Mississippi Bar, she directed the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund office in Jackson, Mississippi. In l968, she moved to Washington, D.C., as counsel for the Poor People's Campaign that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. began organizing before his death. She founded the Washington Research Project, a public interest law firm and the parent body of the Children's Defense Fund. For two years she served as the Director of the Center for Law and Education at Harvard University and in 1973 began CDF.
Edelman served on the Board of Trustees of Spelman College which she chaired from 1976 to 1987 and was the first woman elected by alumni as a member of the Yale University Corporation on which she served from 1971 to 1977. She has received many honorary degrees and awards including the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Prize, the Heinz Award, and a MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship. In 2000, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, and the Robert F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award for her writings which include eight books: Families in Peril: An Agenda for Social Change; The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours; Guide My Feet: Meditations and Prayers on Loving and Working for Children; Stand for Children; Lanterns: A Memoir of Mentors; Hold My Hand: Prayers for Building a Movement to Leave No Child Behind; I'm Your Child, God: Prayers for Our Children; and I Can Make a Difference: A Treasury to Inspire Our Children. Her latest book, The Sea is So Wide and My Boat is So Small: Charting a Course for the Next Generation, will be in bookstores September 23, 2008.
She is a board member of the Robin Hood Foundation, the Association to Benefit Children, and City Lights School and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.
The annual Benjamin E. Mays Memorial Lecture Series, sponsored by Georgia State's College of Education and Alonzo A. Crim Center for Urban Educational Excellence, began in 1989 to encourage the discussion of issues facing urban educational leaders through a series of lectures. The annual event not only honors the memory of Mays, an Atlanta educator, but also promotes his philosophy of excellence in the education of those typically least served by society.
Dr. Joyce E. King holds the Benjamin E. Mays Endowed Chair for Urban Teaching, Learning and Leadership at Georgia State University, where she is also Professor of Educational Policy Studies. The former Provost and Professor of Education at Spelman College and Associate Provost at Medgar Evers College, Dr. King is recognized here and abroad for her contributions to the field of education. She also served as Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Diversity Programs at the University of New Orleans and Director of Teacher Education at Santa Clara University.
Her publications include four books--Preparing Teachers for Diversity, Teaching Diverse Populations, Black Mothers to Sons: Juxtaposing African American Literature with Social Practice and Black Education: A Transformative Research and Action Agenda for the New Century. Numerous other publications also address the role of cultural knowledge in effective teaching and teacher preparation, Black teachers’ emancipatory pedagogy and Black Studies epistemology and curriculum change. Recent publications include: “If Justice Is Our Objective”: Diaspora Literacy, Heritage Knowledge, and the Praxis of Critical Studyin’ in the National Society for the Study of Education Yearbook, “Epilogue: Black Education Post-Katrina. And ‘All Us We’ Are Not Saved” in The SAGE Handbook of African American Education and “Critical & Qualitative Research in Teacher Education: A Blues Epistemology for Cultural Well-Being and a Reason for Knowing” the Third Handbook of Research on Teacher Education.
In 2001 Dr. King founded the Academy for Diaspora Literacy, Inc. to enable educators and families to use community cultural resources and heritage knowledge to support academic and cultural excellence in education. She has served as the co-Editor of the top-ranked journal, the Review of Educational Research.
Dr. King is a graduate of Stanford University where she received a Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Social Foundations of Education and a Bachelor of Arts degree (with Honors) in Sociology. She also holds a certificate from the Harvard Graduate School Institute in Educational Management.