Ruth Winifred Brown, (born July 26, 1891, Hiawatha, Kansas, U.S. died September 10, 1975, Collinsville, Oklahoma), American librarian and activist, who was dismissed from her job at an Oklahoma library for her civil rights activities in 1950. Brown began her career as a librarian in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, in 1919. She became the president of the Oklahoma Library Association in 1931 and was a founding member of the Committee on the Practice of Democracy (COPD) in 1946. At that time the COPD was the only affiliate of the Congress of Racial Equality south of the Mason and Dixon Line. Brown came to