The young Brown was a star student of Myrtilla Miner, an abolitionist who ran a school for black girls in the virulently proslavery Washington region.

But she supported Miner's overall mission: In the late 1850s, Brown briefly taught at the school alongside Emily Howland.

She clashed with the president of the college, Charles Grandison Finney, over his opinion that the abolition of slavery was best accomplished incrementally.

Upon her return, she operated the School for Colored Girls for roughly a dozens students in her mother's home in Georgetown.

[1] The student body was racially segregated, but Brown, who was black or mixed-race, was assisted by a white woman, Frances W. Perkins.