R. Jess Brown
American lawyer (1912–1989)
Richard Jess Brown, commonly known as R. Jess Brown (September 2, 1912 – December 31, 1989) was an American civil rights lawyer and teacher. Brown was known for his work in Mississippi with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. He was involved in a 1948 civil right lawsuit over discriminatory teacher compensation, and lost his teaching job for signing on to the lawsuit. The experience inspired him to return to school to become a lawyer.
Early life and education
Richard Jess Brown was born on September 2, 1912, in Coffeyville, Kansas, and raised in Muskogee, Oklahoma.
He attended Illinois State Normal University, Indiana University Bloomington (M.Ed 1942) and the Texas Southern University Law School (now Thurgood Marshall School of Law).
Career
In his early career in the late 1940s, Brown taught industrial arts in Mississippi at Alcorn College, Lanier High School, and Campbell College. He lost a teaching job in 1948 after signing on as a co-plaintiff with Gladys Noel Bates in her lawsuit for equal pay against the Jackson County School District. Brown decided to become a lawyer, and returned to studies at Texas Southern University's law school.
He returned to Mississippi in 1953, and passed the Mississippi bar exam.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “R. Jess Brown” is american lawyer (1912–1989). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Jess, Brown and American, not as a finished interpretation.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 1, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q124738447. VIAF identifies the subject as 68594655. The Library of Congress control number is no2002024006. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1912, 1989, 1948 and 1942.
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This entry incorporates text from “R. Jess Brown” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.