One of Pittsburgh's best known civil rights activists, an accomplished attorney, and a former mayoral candidate has died. Byrd Brown passed away this morning after a long battle with cancer. In the 1960s, Brown helped to organize rallies at Forbes Field where Dr. Martin Luther King spoke and organized 5,000 people in a 1967 downtown march for better jobs for blacks at Duquesne Light. In 1989, he was in the crowded field of candidates seeking the Democratic nomination for mayor of Pittsburgh. His father, Homer Brown, was the first black judge in Allegheny County.
Funeral services have yet to be set.