This article highlights the overshadowed contributions that Marion Thompson Wright, Ruby Jackson Gainer, and Mamie Phipps Clark made to the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case. Arguably, Brown would not have materialized without their legal and scholarly activism. Yet their legacies were eclipsed by legendary race men with whom their private and public lives were intertwined. As race women in their own right, they have bequeathed implicitly to successive generations of Black women and girls: more equitable teacher salaries and representation in national teachers associations; greater access to quality early childhood through higher education; a brilliant scholarly foundation of Black educational research; and cautionary lessons about the perennial burden Black women educators shoulder to circumvent their marginalization and invisibility.
