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Biography · Education & Scholarship

Charlotte L. Brown

1839–1914

United States

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Biography

Charlotte L. Brown (1839–?) was an American educator and civil rights activist who was one of the first to legally challenge racial segregation in the United States when she filed a successful lawsuit against a streetcar company in San Francisco in the 1860s after she was forcibly removed from a segregated streetcar. Brown's legal action and the precedent it created led to additional challenges to segregation in San Francisco and within 30 years, California enacted legislation to make such segregation on streetcars illegal statewide.

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Wikipedia contributors — original record ↗

Black heritage reference ↗

Biography text · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source checked 2026-10-13

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