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In the late 1940s Esther Swirk Brown, a midwestern white woman of Jewish heritage, was largely an unknown figure in the civil rights movement. But it was Brown who took the fast steps in the legal assault on racial segregation in public schools. Here is her story.
Born in Kansas City, Esther Brown attended the University of Chicago Esther Swirk Brown and Northwestern University. She was married in 1943 and settled into a life of a suburban housewife in Merriam, Kansas, with her husband Paul. In 1947 the local school district in Brown's suburban Kansas City neighborhood appropriated $90,000 to build a new school for 222 white children. The tax money used to build the school came from all residents of the town including some black families. But that didn't matter. Jim Crow was firmly in place. The 44 black schoolchildren in the district were required to remain in a dilapidated two-room schoolhouse that had no indoor plumbing. Rats lived in the building. The school basement was periodically flooded and students were obliged to use an...