“If you don’t go to college, your job will be to go in this white woman’s house through the back door and scrub floors.”
This was the reality that Marilyn Brown faced as a young Black girl in Oxford, North Carolina, coming of age in the Jim Crow south. Her options were limited, but her tenacity wasn’t. Education was a high value of Brown’s,
and she knew a college degree would be necessary for her to realize a future outside of domestic service. So, she studied. She worked hard. She went to college. And, she created a distinguished career in education for herself.
In 1952, Marilyn T. Brown embarked on a college education at Virginia Union University, a private, historically-black college in Richmond, VA. During summers, she worked as a maid and waitress.
She remembers the grit it took to work in the North Carolina heat: “I had 22 rooms, 22 beds and 22 bathrooms to clean every day. I knew I had to get me a degree.”
In 1956, she did just that. Brown graduated from Virginia Union University and pursued a career in education. Her first classroom was in an elementary school in Washington, D.C.
Over the years she witnessed history unfold through her own eyes. She remembers watching, in awe, as lunch counters were desegregated in Greensboro, NC in 1960.
Eight years later, she took part in the Poor People’s March on Washington, D.C., organized by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The march shone a spotlight on economic inequality and demanded economic and human rights for poor Americans. While
participating, she connected with some of her North Carolina friends, ate with them, and recalls dipping their feet in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool together.
“I knew it would be big, but I didn’t know it was going to be historic. It turned out to be one of the marches of the century,” remembers Brown.
Brown dedicated her career to serving and making her community a better place. She clocked some 30 years in the Washington, D.C. public school system before retiring as Associate Superintendent.
During her tenure she accomplished much, including pioneering the District of Columbia’s Public Schools first international student exchange program--not only a feather in her cap, but a program that continues to flourish today. Brown also
started a “perfect attendance program” that awarded the children who showed up every day. Brown felt an intrinsic drive to serve her students and improve the systems that support them. “If your school isn’t the way you want it
to be, go in and see how you can help it be better,” says Brown.
With no plans to slow down after retirement, Brown got to spend even more time focusing on serving her community and furthering causes she believed in. She served as the District of Columbia Democratic National Committeewoman from 2008 to 2012,
and served on the Democratic State Committee for about ten years. Then, she turned her work to the National Cathedral where she started a program called Cathedral Scholars.
Today, Brown lives alone in the home that she shared with her late husband. She keeps up with the news and is encouraged by the Black Lives Matter Movement. She senses change occurring.
“When I look at the Black Lives Matter on TV, I see all of the white people participating. It’s wonderful. We haven’t had this before,” she explains.
Brown became a Meals on Wheels client when her husband was sick and on hospice care. She was losing too much weight and needed meals that provided proper nutrition. Now, she receives support from her local Meals on Wheels America
Member program,
Iona Senior Services.
“It’s good food, very healthy,” said Brown. During the pandemic she has worked hard to stay safe. “I keep my distance. I wear my mask. I have masks at my front door in case anyone doesn’t have one. I don’t play no games with that.”
Brown has spent a lifetime working hard to achieve better outcomes for herself and those in her community, whether it was working hard to get a bachelor’s degree that helped her avoid a life as a maid, starting long-lasting
programs benefiting children in her community, or even doing her part to wear a mask during the pandemic in 2020.
“If you work hard, sometimes it’s not always good. Sometimes you go up and down. But, if you work hard, and you do what’s right, you know you’ll make it. I do believe that. You’ll make it. But you gotta do your part.”