Linda Brown’s parents, Leola and Oliver Brown, wanted to enroll their 9-year-old daughter in an elementary school just a few blocks from their home in Topeka, Kansas. The school refused to admit her; instead, Brown’s parents were advised to send their daughter to an all-black school clear across town.
Thus began a protracted legal battle that confronted, and finally broke, educational apartheid in America, with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, in 1954, that outlawed the “separate-but-equal” doctrine that states routinely used to keep intact their systems of educational apartheid.
Preferring a quiet life, Brown eschewed attention, although she occasionally would give talks on the landmark case. She died on March 25; her family gave no further information.
Leid Stories honors Linda Brown in the continuum of struggle for equal education in the United States of America.