[3] In 1931, she graduated from Cass Technical High School and entered Fisk University,[4] a historically black college in Nashville, Tennessee.

[2] To manage college expenses Brown worked at a Detroit Urban League summer camp for underprivileged children.

This commitment was inspired by her strong reaction to the lynching of a young black man accused of rape in Columbia, Tennessee.

This inspired her to attend Wayne State University's law school, she would pass the bar examination two weeks after her graduation in 1948.

[1] As a student she participated in demonstrations and was praised by writer Edward T. Clayton for her "willingness to battle injustice.

[5] Brown is also noted to be a women's rights activist, as she worked to curb the distribution of pornography through the mail.

Her devotion to issues like education, civil rights, health, and labor often challenged more conservative members of her party.

[3] She supported Dwight Eisenhower when he ran for re-election in 1956 over the Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson, because of his views on civil rights.

[8] Her candidacy in the Democratic Primary for US representative from Michigan's 1st District was announced following her 1956 selection as the Outstanding Woman Legislator of the year.

[5] In 1957, she was appointed as the special associate general counsel of the US Post Office, where she would work until the Democrats returned to power in 1960.

[8] Following ten years in private practice, she returned to Detroit (1970) and joined the Michigan Employment Security Commission as a referee.

The exhibit featured a dozen prominent Black women from the state of Michigan, including Ethelene Crockett, Violet T. Lewis and Lucy Thurman.