Of the 13 black parents who were plaintiffs in the 1954 Brown v. Topeka Board of Education desegregation case, 12 were mothers and one was a father. The case is named for the one father (Oliver Brown) because the NAACP legal team felt that having a man at the head of the roster would be better received by the all-male U.S. Supreme Court Justices. Read more about race relations in Topeka 100 years ago in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).
