accras:

Linda Brown, who as a little girl was at the center of the Brown v. Board of Education US Supreme Court case that ended segregation in schools, has died at the age of 76 (Feb. 20, 1942- March 26, 2018).

Brown was 9 years old when her father, Oliver Brown, tried to enroll her at Sumner Elementary School, then an all-white school in Topeka, Kansas. When the school blocked her enrollment her father sued the Topeka Board of Education.

The court’s landmark ruling in May 1954 – that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” – led to the desegregation of the US education system. Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP’s special counsel and lead counsel for the plaintiffs, argued the case before the Supreme Court. [x]