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Linda Brown, of Brown v. Board of Education, has passed away

Portrait of nine-year-old African-American student Linda Brown outside Sumner Elementary School, Topeka, Kansas, 1953. Photo: Carl Iwasaki / The LIFE Images Collection / Getty Images

Linda Brown, the young girl who was at the center of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education landmark Supreme Court case that led the beginning of racial integration in the U.S. education system, passed away on Sunday at the age of 76. Brown’s sister, Cheryl Brown Henderson, confirmed the death to the Topeka-Capital Journal.

The backdrop: When her enrollment in an all-white Sumner Elementary School in the Kansas capital city was blocked, her family later initiated the landmark civil rights lawsuit 'Brown V. Board of Education.'

Civil rights