Obituary: Linda Brown

choi

Neil Genzlinger, Linda Brown, 75, Student at Center of Landmark Desegregation Case, Dies; Exclusion from an all-white school led to the Brown v Board of Education case. New York Times, Mar 27, 2018.

Quote:

"Linda Brown, whose father objected when she was not allowed to attend an all-white school in her neighborhood * * * died on Sunday [Mar 25] in Topeka, Kan. She was 75. * * * a spokesman for [the funeral home] which is handling her funeral arrangements. He did not specify the cause.  It is Ms Brown's father, Oliver, whose name is attached to the famous case [though there were co-plaintiffs]. * * * In 1954, in a unanimous decision, the court ruled * * *

"Linda Brown was born on Feb 20, 1943, in Topeka to Leola and Oliver Brown, according to the funeral home. (Some sources say she was born in 1942.)

"Cheryl Brown Henderson [Linda's sister] recalled her parents and others being recruited to press a test case.  'They were told. Find the nearest white school to your home and take your child or children and a witness, and attempt to enroll in the fall, and then come back and tell us what happened.  The neighborhood the family lived in was integrated.  'I played with children that were Spanish-American,' Linda Brown said in a 1985 interview. 'I played with children that were white, children that were Indian [npt specifying from India or Native Americans], and black children in my neighborhood.'  Nor were her parents dissatisfied with the black school she was attending. What upset Oliver was the [unspecified] distance Linda had to travel to get to the school -- first a rail yard and across a busy road, then a bus ride.

"In an interview with The Miami Herald in 1987, she remembered the fateful day in September 1950 [Linda was 7 ½ in case she was born in 1943] when her father to her to the Sumner School. * * *The school told her father no, she could not be enrolled.

"Ms Brown was married several times.

My comment:
(a) There is no need to read the rest.
(b) Brown v Board of Education
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Board_of_Education
("In 1951, a class action suit was filed against the Board of Education of the City of Topeka, Kansas in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas. The plaintiffs were thirteen Topeka parents on behalf of their 20 children. The named plaintiff ['named' in the sense of case name; more often the lead plaintiff], Oliver L Brown, was a parent, a welder in the shops of the Santa Fe Railroad [whose initials accounted for last two letters of the current company BNSF], an assistant pastor at his local church, and an African American.* * * Brown's daughter Linda, a third grader, had to walk six blocks to her school bus stop to ride to Monroe Elementary, her segregated black school one mile (1.6 km) away, while Sumner Elementary, a white school, was seven blocks from her house. * * * The District Court [through a three-judge panel] ruled in favor of the Board of Education, citing the US Supreme Court precedent set in Plessy v Ferguson, 163 US 537 (1896), which had upheld a state law requiring 'separate but equal' segregated facilities for blacks and whites in railway cars.  Supreme Court combined four other cases [and heard one argument] All were NAACP [based in Baltimore, Maryland] -sponsored cases. * * * The NAACP's chief counsel, Thurgood Marshall—who was later appointed to the US Supreme Court in 1967—argued the case before the Supreme Court for the plaintiffs. * * * In December 1952, the [United States] Justice Department filed a friend of the court brief in the case" in support of plaintiffs)
(i) At the time, to challenge constitutionality of a state law (here for segregation) or city ordinance, federal law required a federal district court to form a randomly assigned three-judge panel (2 from that district court and 1 from court of appeals). From its disposal, a losing party appealed to supreme court, bypassing court of appeals.
(ii) "In December 1952, the Justice Department filed a friend of the court brief"

That was a month before president Truman stepped down. "Since 1937, it [US presidential inauguration] has taken place on January 20." Wikipedia.  Before 1937, inauguration had been held in March.
(iii) Topeka, Kansas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topeka,_Kansas
(state capital; by Kansas River [which empties into Missouri River]; As of the 2010 census, the city population was 127,473; "The name Topeka is a Kansa-Osage [a group of Siouan languages] sentence that means 'place where we dug potatoes,' or 'a good place to dig potatoes.' As a placename, Topeka was first recorded in 1826 * * * for what is now called the Kansas River")