Linda Brown, a third grader, had to walk six blocks to her school bus stop to ride to Monroe Elementary, her segregated black school one mile away, while Sumner Elementary, a white school, was seven blocks from her house. Her father Oliver Brown was the “Brown” in the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education. This decision overturned the separate but equal doctrine that had been used as the standard in Civil Rights lawsuits since the Plessy v. Ferguson case in 1896, in effect declaring it unconstitutional to have separate public schools for black and white students. The decision is considered a major milestone in the Civil Rights Movement. Linda Brown died Sunday afternoon in Topeka, Kansas. She was 75 years old. Brown was 9 years old in 1951 when her father, Oliver Brown, tried to enroll her at Sumner Elementary School. When the school blocked her enrollment her father sued the Topeka Board of Education. Four similar cases were combined with Brown’s complaint and presented to the Supreme Court as Oliver L. Brown et al v. Board of Education of Topeka, Shawnee County, Kansas, et al. Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP’s special counsel and lead counsel for the plaintiffs, argued the case before the Supreme Court. Marshall would later go on to become the first African American Supreme Court Justice. Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer on Monday acknowledged Brown’s contribution to American history.
Linda Brown from an interview in 1985:
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