As part of EJI’s project on race and poverty, it will host a public forum on the implications of racial history on Tuesday, February 11. Co-sponsored with the Children’s Defense Fund, the evening will feature presentations by Marian Wright Edelman, Founder and President of the Children’s Defense Fund; Dr. Terrence Roberts, one of the Little Rock Nine who racially integrated schools in the South; and EJI Director Bryan Stevenson.
February 11, 2014
7:30 p.m.
Renaissance Hotel, 201 Tallapoosa Street, Montgomery, Alabama 36104
Free Admission and Open to the Public
EJI honored Marian Wright Edelman at its annual benefit dinner with a 2012 Champion of Justice Award. Ms. Edelman has dedicated her esteemed professional career to advocating for disadvantaged children and families. A Yale Law School graduate, Mrs. Edelman was the first African American woman admitted to the Mississippi Bar. She directed the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund’s office in Jackson, Mississippi, in the 1960’s and in 1968 became legal counsel for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign. She founded the Washington Research Project, a public interest law firm, and served as Director of the Center for Law and Education at Harvard University before founding the Children’s Defense Fund in 1973.
CDF has become the nation’s strongest voice for children and families. Mrs. Edelman’s work has been recognized with hundreds of honorary degrees and awards. In 2000, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award.
Terrence J. Roberts, Ph.D., is most publicly known as a member of The Little Rock Nine, a group of nine teenagers who desegregated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957. Dr. Roberts is CEO of Terrence Roberts Consulting, a management consultant firm devoted to fair and equitable practices in business and industry. A graduate of California State University at Los Angeles (BA), and UCLA (MSW), Dr. Roberts obtained his Ph.D. in psychology from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois. He recently retired from the faculty in the department of psychology at Antioch University, Los Angeles. He currently lives in Pasadena, California, where he is active in the Pasadena/Altadena community helping young people develop positive attitudes toward obtaining formal education.