Two of America’s most influential advocates for improving the life outcomes of children from underprivileged backgrounds will be honored this evening during an awards ceremony meant to recognize their lifetime achievements.
Diverse will present its distinguished John Hope Franklin Award to Dr. Edmund Gordon, a longtime research scientist, a prolific writer on the subject of academic achievement and educational equity and an original architect of the federally funded Head Start program; and Marian Wright Edelman, founder and longtime leader of the Children’s Defense Fund, a national organization that has for decades pushed for policies that improve the quality of life for the nation’s poorest children.
This is the seventh year that Diverse has presented the John Hope Franklin Award, and the first year the award presentation has been incorporated into the annual meeting of the American Council on Education in Washington, D.C.
Maya Minter, Diverse’s vice president of editorial and production, says both Gordon and Edelman embody the principles of the award’s namesake, a noted historian who played a critical role in creating the framework for Brown v. Board of Education.
Minter says the late Franklin would have found nothing more encouraging than for the education community to come together to see both Edmund and Edelman receive the award named in his honor.
Of Gordon, Minter says, “He and Dr. Franklin represent the very essence of intellectual excellence and integrity in research and scholarship.”
Minter describes Edelman’s Children’s Defense Fund as “the most powerful voice ever created for the millions of poor children in the United States.”
