Harriet Elizabeth Brown

Harriet Elizabeth Brown, a Calvert County school teacher, greatly impacted the teaching profession. She was a catalyst for change in Maryland's education for equal pay, regardless of race.

Brown was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to William and Mary Brown in 1907. She attended Philadelphia Normal School (now known as Philadelphia High School for Girls). After returning to Maryland, Brown earned a Bachelor of Science in Education from Morgan State University and a Master of Education from the University of Maryland.

Starting in 1931, Brown became a teacher for Calvert County Public Schools. During her employment as a teacher, she discovered that African American teachers received a much lower salary than white teachers. As a general rule, African American teachers worked in separate schools at salaries far below those of white teachers working in the same community, with the same training and qualifications, and doing the same work. Brown, a teacher with eight years of experience and a first-grade certificate, received an annual salary of $600.00, while her white counterparts with the same qualifications and experience received an annual salary of $1,100.00.

Disturbed by the inequity and the injustice of the Calvert County teachers' pay scale, Brown courageously set out to right the wrong. She enlisted the services of the Maryland State Colored Teachers Association and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP) attorney, Thurgood Marshall. Brown and Marshall brought a suit against the county on November 11, 1937, contending the statute setting up separate salary scales for public school teachers based on their race violated the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

On December 27, 1937, her case was settled, with the Calvert County Board of Education agreeing to equalize salaries. This landmark case opened the door a couple of years later for the Maryland Teachers Pay Equalization Law, the first equalization law in the State. Brown's case became the turning point of the salary equalization fight in Maryland, eventually spreading throughout the country.

Brown received many honors for her courageous fight for equality, including recognition by the Calvert Retired Teachers Association as a Woman of Courage (2002), a historical marker erected in Sunderland, Calvert County, MD, and in 2016, Calvert County named the Harriet Elizabeth Brown Community Center, the first government building in the county to be named after an African American.

Brown spent over thirty years as an educator, teaching and later becoming a Principal at Mt. Hope Elementary School. Brown died at age 101 on January 1, 2009.

“If I lose my job, at least it’s for something worthwhile.” - Harriet Elizabeth Brown

Biography courtesy of the Maryland Commission for Women, 1994; updated 2023.