Linda Brown, significant role player in US school racial segregation, dies aged 76
Linda Brown, an influential player in the 1950s court battle that led to the desegregation of US public schools, has died.
Brown died on Sunday, aged 76. The cause of her death was unknown.
Brown was at the center of the Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954, which was a key moment in the movement to end widespread discriminatory practices against black people in the United States.
Brown “is one of that special band of heroic young people who, along with her family, courageously fought to end the ultimate symbol of white supremacy – racial segregation in public schools,” a statement from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), said.
In the early 1950s, Oliver Brown sought to enroll his daughter (Linda) in an all-white school near the family’s home in Topeka, Kansas, but was told she had to go to an all-black school that was farther away.
Brown fought back and turned to the courts for justice in a case that was part of an anti-segregation push by the NAACP.
On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that segregation was unconstitutional.
