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Biography
Peggy Sundelle Charren (née Walzer; March 9, 1928 – January 22, 2015) was an American activist, known as the founder of Action for Children's Television (ACT), a national child advocacy organization, in 1968. The organization was founded in an effort to encourage program diversity and eliminate commercial abuses in children's television programming.
In 1989, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences awarded her its Trustees' Award. Her work with ACT culminated in the passage of the Children's Television Act of 1990, and she received a Peabody Award in 1991. In 1992, she disbanded ACT, announcing that it had met the objectives she had set out to accomplish. In 1995, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Although denounced as an advocate for censorship by her critics, including animation writers Steve Gerber and Mark Evanier, Charren has insisted she is an outspoken critic of censorship, and has cited her stance against the American Family Association's campaigns to ban various programs. She sat on the Board of Trustees of public broadcaster WGBH in Boston, Massachusetts. She died on January 22, 2015. In her later years, she had vascular dementia.