Henry Kirke Brown

• Born: Mar. 2, 1836, South Lee, Mass.
• Education: Yale College, B.A., 1856; studied briefly at Yale Law School and Harvard Law School
• Previous government service: U.S. deputy marshal, 1861; assistant U.S. attorney, Detroit, Mich., 1863–68; circuit judge, Wayne County, Mich., 1868; federal judge, Eastern District of Michigan, 1875–90
• Appointed by President Benjamin Harrison Dec. 23, 1890; replaced Samuel Miller, who died
• Supreme Court term: confirmed by the Senate Dec. 29, 1890, by a voice vote; retired May 28, 1906
• Died: Sept. 4, 1913, New York, N.Y.

Henry B. Brown became a lawyer in 1860 in Detroit, Michigan, after finishing his formal education at Yale. After a 15-year career as a federal district judge in Michigan, Brown joined the U.S. Supreme Court.

Justice Brown's strong support of property rights and free enterprise, and his tendency to resist strong government regulation of business, reflected the dominant opinions of his time. So did Brown's views about civil rights for black Americans, which were expressed in his opinion for the Court in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). The Plessy decision supported a Louisiana state law that required black and white railroad passengers to sit in separate railway cars. Justice Brown, writing for the Court, argued that this Louisiana law did not violate the “equal protection of the laws” clause of the 14th Amendment. Brown used a “separate but equal” doctrine to support the Court's decision. He stated that separate facilities could be required by law for blacks and whites as long as the facilities provided for one group were equal to the facilities provided for the other group. He wrote, “We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority.”

The Court's decision in the Plessy case led to widespread enactment of state laws to segregate blacks from whites, to keep them apart, in the use of public facilities, such as schools, rest rooms, parks, cemeteries, and so forth.

Justice Brown left the Court in 1906 because of failing eyesight. He was popular then, but is not well regarded today because of his opinion for the Court in the Plessy case. Most Americans today strongly reject the legal segregation of blacks and whites, which Justice Brown defended in the 1890s. However, Brown and his Supreme Court colleagues expressed the prevailing view of that era about black-white relationships.

See also Plessy v. Ferguson

For other persons named Henry Brown, see Henry Brown (disambiguation).

Henry Kirke Brown, circa 1870.

L to R.: Henry Kirke Brown, Henry Peters Gray and Asher Brown Durand, 1850

Henry Kirke Brown (February 24, 1814, Leyden, Massachusetts – July 10, 1886, Newburgh, New York) was an American sculptor.

He began to paint portraits while still a boy, studied painting in Boston under Chester Harding, learned a little about modelling, and in 1836-1839 spent his summers working as a railroad engineer to earn enough to enable him to study further.

He spent four years (1842-1846) in Italy; but returning to New York he remained distinctively American, and was never dominated, as were so many of the early American sculptors, by Italian influence.

His equestrian statues are excellent, notably that of General Winfield Scott (1874) in Washington, D.C., and one of George Washington (1856) in Union Square, New York City, which was the second equestrian statue made in the United States,^[1] following by three years that of Andrew Jackson in Washington by Clark Mills (1815-1883). Brown was one of the first in America to cast his own bronzes.

DeWitt Clinton Memorial, 1855, at Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn

Among his other works are: Abraham Lincoln (Union Square, New York City); Nathanael Greene, George Clinton, Philip Kearny, and Richard Stockton (all in the National Statuary Hall, United States Capitol, Washington, D.C.); De Witt Clinton (illustration, left) and The Angel of the Resurrection, both in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York; and an Aboriginal Hunter. The New York Times remarked that the DeWitt Clinton was the first American full-length sculpture cast in a single piece, when it was exhibited temporarily in City Hall Park in 1855.

Henry Brown's children include Harold Bush-Brown, a long time director of the Georgia Tech's architecture school, and James Bush-Brown, landscape architect and co-author of America's Garden Book.

Note

1. ^ Illustration

External links

• Bush-Brown Family Papers

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

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