In September 1950, a black father took his 7-year-old daughter by the hand and walked briskly for four blocks to an all-white school in their Topeka, Kan., neighborhood.

Sumner was the closest elementary school to their home, but Linda Brown was not allowed to attend because of the color of her skin.

The Rev. Oliver Leon Brown seemed fearless that September day, his daughter would recall 50 years later during a 2004 speech at the University of Michigan. She remembered her father’s hands were strong, those of a boxer. He was a heavyset man who had once been a Golden Gloves champion boxer, and this was a fight that he was determined to win.