Martha Bergmark
Martha Jane Bergmark is an attorney, civil rights advocate, and writer from Mississippi. Bergmark is best known for her work promoting civil justice through civil legal aid organizations at the local, state, and national level. Currently, Bergmark serves as the executive director of Voices for Civil Justice. In 1978, she co-founded the Southeast Mississippi Legal Services to provide federally funded legal aid services in a nine county area.
In the late 1980s, she served as the civil division director and then as senior vice president for programs of the Washington DC–based National Legal Aid and Defender Association. She held the position of president of the Legal Services Corporation which advocates for and administers federal funding for legal aid programs throughout the United States. In 2003, she moved back to Mississippi and co-found the Mississippi Center for Justice. Bergmark was recognized as a "Champion of Change" by United States President Obama's White House in 2011 for her work to advance racial and economic justice.
Early life, education, and family
Martha Jane Bergmark is the daughter of Robert Bergmark, a Methodist minister, and Carol Bergmark, a choir director. In 1953, her family moved to Jackson, Mississippi for her father to become a professor of philosophy at Millsaps College. Bergmark grew up in a traditional middle class community in Jackson where racial segregation between blacks and white residents was common and enforced through Jim Crow era laws. By the time she was in high school, her parents and she were involved at the local level with the civil rights movement and new federal social service programs to help promote economic advances for African Americans. During the summers, she traveled to Tougaloo, Mississippi to work with under privileged African American children—the first summer as an unpaid volunteer aide for the Head Start Program, and the next two summers as a paid teacher's aide in the initial years of the Upward Bound program. The high school that she attended, Murrah High School, was racially integrated while she was student. Bergmark's decision to volunteer as an orientation counselor for incoming black students revealed for the first time to her friends and teachers her affinity to African Americans. Her experience during her high school years motivated her towards her career of working to advance racial and economic justice. Bergmark excelled academically in high school and was named a U.S. Presidential ScholaBergmark earned a degree from Oberlin College. She obtained a Juris Doctor degree from University of Michigan Law School in 1973. While in law school Bergmark participated in the first law school clinic at the University of Michigan. As a law student, Bergmark worked as a Reginald Heber Smith Fellow at North Mississippi Rural Legal Services, Mississippi's first civil legal aid organization, and the Community Legal Services.
Bergmark met Elliott Andalman, her future husband, while in law school. They have two sons, Aaron Samuel Andalman and David Andalman. Her son, David Andalman, wrote and co-directed American Milkshake, which was selected for the Sundance Film Festival in 2013. The low budget independent comedy about race, class and basketball in 1990s was produced out of Bergmark's family house on Montgomery Avenue in Takoma Park, Maryland.