December 7, 2007

Edwards Taps His Working-Class Childhood to Focus on Issues of Opportunity and Equality

By KARIN FISCHER

The former senator has made college access a central part of his presidential campaign

None of John Edwards's children graduated last May from Greene Central High School, in rural eastern North Carolina, but the former U.S. senator was as proud as any parent.

Sixty-one percent of the 171 cap-and-gowned seniors were heading for college in the fall, an astonishingly high number in a blue-collar community where most young people have viewed their post-high school options as factory