Mary Brown Williams Ledbetter (April 28, 1932 – March 21, 2010), better known as Brownie Ledbetter, was a political activist, social justice crusader and lobbyist who was involved in the civil rights, feminist, labor and environmental movements in Arkansas, United States and abroad. Early life Ledbetter was born in Little Rock, Arkansas on April 28, 1932. The first of four children born to William H. Williams (dairy farmer) and Helon Brown Williams (homemaker), the family lived on the Tall Timber Jersey Farm. As a young child she was given the nickname Brownie as a descriptive of her brown eyes. Her mother died in 1947, and her father in 1950 leaving Ledbetter and her three siblings in the care of her aunt and uncle Grainger and Frances Williams. She attended and graduated from Little Rock Central High School, which would later be the locus of her first involvement in political activism. From 1950 to 1953 Ledbetter attended Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia. She was married on July 26, 1953 to Dr. Calvin Ledbetter, Jr., an attorney who would later become a political science professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. The couple lived for two years in Germany where Ledbetter's husband was stationed with the U.S. Army Judge Advocate Corps. Ledbetter and her husband eventually settled down in Arkansas and had three children. Political career Ledbetter had a long, dedicated and varied career. Bill Kopsky, executive director of the Arkansas Public Policy Panel said of her : "Brownie was an innovator in that she created a model for public policy work based on helping people find common ground, even when they were unaccustomed to working with each other. Her ability to establish a rapport with anyone was legendary, and she used that ability to bring people to the table in the hopes of finding common ground and common goals. First and foremost, she was a bridge builder," and "She really believed strongly in respecting where people were coming from and bringing them together to create common ground and use that common ground to create change." Desegregation and grassroots support Ledbetter became politically active around the time the Little Rock Integration Crisis of 1957, after nine African-American students were barred from entering her alma mater, Little Rock Central High School by a blockade of the Arkansas National Guard under the direction of Governor Orval Faubus. She joined the work