Linda Brown, Key Figure in Brown v Board of Education Decision, Dies at 75

Hollywood luminaries celebrate the life and legacy of woman at the center of the fight against segregation

Linda Brown Smith

Linda Brown Smith, who as a little girl was a central figure in Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court case that declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional, died Monday in Topeka, Kansas. She was 75.

She entered American history at age 9 when her father, Oliver Brown, joined with 12 other Topeka-area black families recruited by the NAACP to attempt to enroll their children in whites-only schools. After their children were denied enrollment, the group filed the class action lawsuit against the city’s Board of Education that was decided unanimously by the Supreme Court in 1954.

As news of her death became public, admirers honored her on social media. “Hero,” said “A Wrinkle in Time” director Ava DuVernay. “This history seems ancient. It’s not. R.I.P.” said MSNBC’s Joy Reid.

As an adult, Linda Brown Smith became an activist in her own right. In 1978, she became a plaintiff in another case bearing her family’s name that sought to stop enrollment policies in Topeka that she said would lay the groundwork for a return to segregation. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the Board of Education in 1989, a decision upheld in 1993 when the Supreme Court denied an appeal.

Linda and her sister Cheryl founded the Brown Foundation in 1988. The organization facilitates public discourse about the significance of the Brown decision, provides scholarships to minority students, recognizes Civil Rights leaders, and works to preserve historic buildings connected to the movement.

“Linda was a spiritual Christian woman that loved not only the Lord, but she loved her family and took on the responsibility of what Brown v. Board of Education meant to her. Her legacy will be that she shared all of her life with all of us,” her friend, Carolyn Campbell, told CNN.

On Twitter, admirers celebrated her life and legacy, and her impact on American history.

 

Ross A. Lincoln

Ross joined TheWrap as a news editor in 2017; he was previously associate editor at Deadline from 2015-2017, and before that comics editor at The Escapist, and features editor at Game Front. As a writer, in addition to TheWrap his bylines can be found at Deadline, Box Office, The Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, The…

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