Even as a little girl, Marian Wright Edelman loved to read.

But, growing up in rural Bennettsville, South Carolina during the difficult days of segregation, she was not welcome in her local library, just three blocks down the street from her family home.

Marian's mother (Maggie Leola Bowen Wright) and her father (Rev. Arthur Jerome Wright, long-time pastor of Bennettsville's Shiloh Baptist Church) instilled a deep love of learning in their five children. A book was bought before a second pair of shoes. Education was a deeply-held value and the children were taught that "service is the rent you pay for life...not something you do in your spare time."