Oliver Brown

About

Activist notable for being the lead plaintiff in the monumental U.S. Supreme Court Case, Oliver Brown, et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka, et al. (Brown vs. Board of Education). He had been called upon to participate in the NAACP's legal action to desegregate Topeka's public elementary schools in 1950 by childhood friend and attorney Charles Scott.

Before Fame

He was a welder for the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway at the time of the landmark Supreme Court case. He was also an assistant pastor at Topeka's black Methodist church and studying to become a minister himself.

Trivia

Darlene Brown was actually alphabetically first amongst the list of plaintiffs for the Brown vs. Board of Education case, however, because he was male, he was listed as the lead plaintiff and the case was therefore named after him. 

Family Life

He and his wife Leola Brown Montgomery were the parents of 3 children - Terry Lynn Brown, Cheryl Brown Henderson, and Linda Carol Brown.

Associated With

The decision made in his case overruled the separate but equal concept that had been used as a principle in Civil Rights lawsuits since plaintiff Homer Plessy's Plessy v. Ferguson case of 1896.