Anderson Hunt Brown

Anderson Hunt Brown (1880 – 1974) was an American businessman, real-estate developer, and civil rights activist.

As a very successful African-American man in West Virginia, A.H. Brown worked on behalf of citizens and residents of the Charleston Independent School District for the integration of public schools. In a lawsuit titled Brown vs. Board of Education (1928)—with NAACP lawyer T. G. Nutter representing Brown and others—the West Virginia Supreme Court desegregated the Charleston library.

Anderson's son, Willard L. Brown, became the first black judge in West Virginia and represented the state chapter of the NAACP in a case of racial discrimination in public schools. That filing became part of the historic U.S. Supreme Court school desegregation ruling in 1954.

Personal life Anderson Hunt Brown was born in 1880 in Dunbar, West Virginia. His parents, Henry Arnold Brown and Margaret Stewart Brown, were former slaves who were freed in 1865 and located in an area known as Dutch Holler, now part of present-day Dunbar.

As a teenager, Brown learned to play trombone and traveled to Cincinnati and other cities with his brothers in their band, "Uncle Tom’s Cabin," netting $10 a week (about $300 today) for their performances. Upon returning to Charleston, he learned how to cut meat and opened a butcher shop and adjoining restaurant.

Originally brought before the Circuit Court in Kanawha County, the Circuit judge ruled that the Board was within its rights in providing separate libraries. Brown and the lawyers then took the case to the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, in a lawsuit titled Brown vs. Board of Education of Charleston Independent School District (1928).

Represented by NAACP lawyer T. G. Nutter, Brown, along with E. L. Powell and W. W. Sanders, successfully brought the Supreme Court to desegregate the Charleston library. The Court said that taxpayers’ money could not be used for a main library and exclude Black taxpayers.