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A new study last week concluded that more than 2 million American children whose parents have employer provided health insurance, are not insured themselves. The result contradicts the myth that the key to getting healthcare for all children is to get their parents insured. Nationwide, a total of 8.1 million children under the age of 18 have no health insurance. One of the many aspects of the economic fallout in recent times has been a dramatic increase in child poverty and homelessness. Today we’ll hear from Marian Wright Edelman, civil rights leaders, and one of the leading children’s advocates in the nation. As the first black woman admitted to the Mississippi Bar, Ms. Edelman 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. Today she is the founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund and the author of The Sea is So Wide and My Boat is So Small: Charting a Course for the Next Generation. I spoke with Marian Wright Edelman recently about her new book, the upcoming elections and its impact on children.

GUEST: Marian Wright Edelman, President and Founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, author of “The Sea is So Wide and My Boat is So Small”