Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel was born on April 21, 1782 in the town of Oberweissbach, Germany. His mother died when he was only nine months old, and his father, who was a pastor, left him on his own. He lived with his uncle in Stadt-llm, Germany. He grew up loving nature and was briefly responsible for maintain a forest. After he was jailed for debt, he joined the military and became friends with H. Langenthal and W. Middendroff. Together they opened up a school in 1816. Here Froebel put his educational theories into practice. In 1837, the Swiss government offered him a job, training elementary school teachers. He later returned to his school with new insight, and opened an infant school in Prussia and called it Play and Activity Institute. He later renamed it Kindergarten. He also created geometric blocks and pattern activity blocks. Froebel was responsible for the kindergarten movement across Europe and it bloomed in North America. (Friedrich Froebel; Robert Bingham Downs)
Marian Wright Edelman was born on June 6, 1939 and lived most of her life in Bennettsville, South Carolina. She went through many years of school, including Yale Law School, which she graduated from in 1963. In the same year, she became the first African American woman admitted into the Mississippi Bar. She worked in New York with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and then moved back to Mississippi when the organization did. In 1968 she married the civil rights attorney Peter Edelman, who was also the chairman of New World Foundation. In 1973, she founded the Children’s Defense Fund. Her mission was, “to leave no child left behind and to ensure every child a healthy start, a fair start, a safe start, a moral start in life, and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities. She has received many awards including, MacArthur “genius” award, Presidential Medal of Freedom, Robert F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award, and more than 65 honorary degrees. (Great African-American lawyers : raising the bar of freedom, Carole Boston Weatherford )
