A Tennessee Farm Grows A New Generation Of Social Justice Activists
The Children's Defense Fund is training young people at its Haley Farm in east Tennessee to run summer enrichment programs modeled after Civil Rights era Freedom Schools.
Children's Defense Fund Founder Marian Wright Edelman is sitting in a rocking chair on a farmhouse porch in the hills of rural east Tennessee. She's granting a rare interview on the farm she bought 25 years ago to use as a retreat to train a new generation of activists.
Everybody needs beauty," she says, looking out on the verdant landscape. A creek meanders through the 150-acre property, which was once owned by Roots author Alex Haley. There are porch-wrapped farmhouses, an apple orchard, a fishing pond, and two structures designed by the architect Maya Lin – the cantilever barn library, and a chapel in the shape of an ark.
"It's a metaphor for hope," says Edelman.
Haley Farm
