Esther Brown

Esther Swirk Brown, born in 1917 in Kansas City, Missouri, was a Jewish civil rights advocate who helped fight unqual conditions in a Johnson County, Kansas, school district. She worked with African American residents in the South Park district who were denied access to a new white school. The Kansas Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision on behalf of the plaintiffs in Webb v. School District No. 90 and the African American children were allowed entrance to the white school. Brown continued her involvement in civil righs activities and went on to establish the Panel of American Women, which became a national movement. She died in 1976.