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, once owned by Roots author Alex Haley, in Clinton. There are porch-wrapped farmhouses, an apple orchard, a fishing pond and two structures designed by architect Maya Lin — the cantilever barn library and a chapel in the shape of an ark.

“It’s a metaphor for hope,” Edelman says.