Madeline Wheeler Murphy (October 24, 1922 – July 8, 2007) was an African-American community activist, civil rights champion, advocate for the poor, and panelist on the Baltimore television show Square Off. Early life Madeline W. Murphy was born in Boston, October 24, 1922, and raised in Wilmington, Delaware. She was the second of three children of Arthur E. Wheeler, Sr., and Madeline (née Hall) Brooks. She was educated in the Wilmington public schools and she graduated from Howard High School where she was valedictorian. She attended Temple University in Philadelphia for two years where she met her husband-to-be, Judge William H. Murphy Sr. at a dance at a nearby university. The couple were married from 1942 until Judge Murphy's death in 2003. They lived in Delaware and Chicago briefly, before moving to the Baltimore area in 1945. After a year at Turner's Station, they moved to Cherry Hill, an all-Black lower-income neighborhood in the south section of Baltimore. Community work As a freelance writer, community organizer and activist, Murphy was devoted social, racial and economic justice through her use of the written word and via various forms of civic engagement. During her sixty years in Baltimore, she participated in numerous community organizations. As a resident of Cherry Hill, she ran unsuccessfully for City Council. Over a span of 26 years, she was involved in some capacity with 14 different political campaigns. After having been a volunteer for fifteen years, she was appointed director of community services for the Cherry Hill Community Presbyterian Church, where she served from 1959 to 1969. In that position, she developed programs in literacy, political education, and youth development. The church served as a last resort for many Cherry Hill residents in need of food, clothing, counseling, job placement and was a location of community organizing around the issues facing welfare recipients and the lack of affordable housing. Under her leadership, this organizing led to the creation of a state-funded day care center in the church for welfare recipients and job training program participants. Murphy organized one of the first contingents of neighborhood VISTA volunteers, a group that later became active in the National Welfare Rights Organization and tenant organizing. During her life, she mentored many African-American women in Baltimore from childhood through college and beyond. Admirably, her community work was both personal and public, and grassroots as well as civic. Murphy served as a charter