An eight-year-old girl in Topeka had already understood intuitively from the school bus window — that the message sent to a child by telling her she cannot attend the school four blocks from her home is not a neutral administrative decision. It is a statement about her worth.

The unanimous ruling of Brown vs. the Board of Education overturned Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 decision that had enshrined "separate but equal" as constitutional law for 58 years. It was one of the most significant legal decisions in American history — a turning point not just for education but for the entire Civil Rights Movement that would follow.

Linda Brown grew up to become a teacher and educational consultant. She spent her adult life working on school integration and equal education — continuing the fight that had begun with her father walking her to a school four blocks away.

"Looking back on Brown v. Board of Education," she said in an interview, "it has made an impact in all facets of life for minorities throughout the land. I really think of it in terms of what it has done for our young people, in taking away that feeling of second-class citizenship."

She was born on this day in 1943.

She passed away in 2018.

In between, she gave her name — without ever choosing to — to the case that told every child in America that the school four blocks away was theirs too.