A'Lelia Bundles and Cheryl Brown Henderson at the Willard Hotel 2-22-2011

My Black History Month has been brimming with living legends!

This afternoon I had the good fortune to be invited to a luncheon hosted by my homegirl Janet Langhart Cohen in honor of Cheryl Brown Henderson, whose father, Reverend Oliver Brown, and sister Linda Brown, were the named plaintiffs in the landmark  Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case.  Today Cheryl is president of the Brown Foundation for Equity, Excellence and Research, a Topeka, Kansas organization that her website says “serves as a living tribute to the attorneys, community organizers and plaintiffs and builds upon their work to ensure equal opportunity for all people.”

We all are beneficiaries of the courage of her family, the other plaintiffs and the attorneys who argued the case.

(And why are we standing in front of a photo of General Ulysses S. Grant? The luncheon was in the Grant Suite of Washington, DC’s Willard Hotel