Marian Wright Edelman Steps Down, and a New Generation Takes Over (Copy)

A Ferguson activist will lead the Children’s Defense Fund at a time when an impassioned civil rights movement is challenging racial injustice.

Marian Wright Edelman, 81, took to the streets this summer, joining millions of people around the country in protesting police brutality after the killing of George Floyd.

Mrs. Edelman, a longtime rights activist and the founder of the influential nonprofit the Children’s Defense Fund, said the protests thrust her back to the 1950s, when she was a teenager in the segregated South, hoping to make a difference in the world.

“I was out there every night,” said Mrs. Edelman, who had been an adviser to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and a mentor to Hillary Clinton. “It felt like the sit-in movement to me. It felt like everything I’ve been living all my life. You see yourself again at 17, 18 and 19.