Death puts life in 'Brown' memory
http://cjonline.com/news/local/2010-05-02/death_puts_life_in_brown_memory
By Rick Dean
May 2, 2010
Her family and friends will honor and bury Dorothy Jean (Fitzgerald)
Brown this weekend in Vallejo, Calif., a city on the doorstep of
northern California's Napa Valley wine country.
But even as the 83-year-old Topeka native is laid to rest, stories
about the role she like so many other African-American children of
her generation played in one of America's most significant court
cases will come alive.
His mother didn't talk much about her Topeka childhood until he was
in his 20s, Lewis Brown remembers.
"That's common, I think, for people of her generation," he said. "The
memory could be painful."
Eventually, however, Dorothy Jean told her stories about how her
schoolgirl experiences would raise the ire of Charles Bledsoe, a
Topeka attorney and the uncle to her best friend, Jean Williams.
Bledsoe, history buffs will know, became one of three Topeka
attorneys who in 1951 filed the Brown vs. Board of Education lawsuit,
one of the five cases that combined to produce the May 17, 1954
Supreme Court decision that struck down the concept of
separate-but-equal segregated public schools.
"I still remember how much it bothered him that I lived just down the
street from Lowman School (an all-white school at the time) but I had
to be bused to Buchanan, and Dorothy Jean to McKinley," Williams said
in recalling two of Topeka's four all-black grade schools. "I still
believe that was the impetus for his interest in the case."
Fitzgerald and Williams were in college Jean in law school at
Loyola of Chicago, Dorothy Jean in the vocal music program at
Washburn by the time Bledsoe joined with Topeka attorneys Charles
and John Scott to file suit on behalf of 13 Topeka families denied
admittance to all-white schools.
But though their names aren't associated with the ground-breaking
Brown case, both women broke color barriers throughout lives that saw
dramatic changes in race relations.
Dorothy Jean became the first black member of the Topeka High School
glee club in 1945, her senior year. She was the first black soloist
at the THS commencement that year. A lifelong teacher, she moved to
northern California and married Lewis Brown, who became the first
black elected official in Solano County. She later was a founder of
the first local chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha, an African-American sorority.
Jean Williams, in her time in Chicago, had a front-row seat to one of
the most turbulent times in America's history.
After getting her law degree in 1951 and passing the bar the same
year, she became active in defending clients involved in the civil
rights and anti-war protests of the 1960s. Martin Luther King came to
call Williams his "lawyer lady" in Chicago, and she developed a
professional relationship with the Rev. Jesse Jackson that continues today.
Her most famous client was outspoken comedian/activist Dick Gregory,
who had Williams' number on whatever passed for speed dial in the
late 1960s after frequent arrests for civil rights or anti-war activity.
"I don't know how many times Greg called me from the Cook County
jail," Williams remembered. "He thought of it as a place to rest
between appearances at the Playboy Club and protests in Grant Park.
He'd say, 'Come bail me out but don't come too quick.' "
Williams later moved to Arizona and in 1976 became the state's first
black judge. Long retired now at age 85, she's got some strong
opinions if you dare to ask against Arizona's new immigration law.
And though she is too frail to travel to the California funeral of
her long-time friend, Williams has fond memories of the changes both
women experienced in their lifetimes.
"I was back in Topeka for a 50-year reunion not long back, and things
have changed so much I almost didn't recognize it," she said. "Good
changes, too. We've come a long way, but we've still got a ways to go."
.
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