Tomlin E. Brown (later Coggan) was born April 9, 1914, in Fresno, California, the daughter of Hiram Wheeler Edwards, a physics professor at Berkeley, and his wife, Vena Marvella Tomlin Edwards. Mrs. Brown resided in Concord Massachusetts from 1953 to 1961, with her then-husband E. Cary Brown, an economics professor at MIT. They later divorced. She served on the school board committee in Concord from 1958 to 1961, holding the position of Secretary. She also served on the Concord-Carlisle Regional School District Committee, 1960 to 1961. After leaving Concord, she worked as administrative secretary for Congressman Gillis W. Long of Louisiana. In 1966 Mrs. Brown took the entrance exams for Emory Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in the Department of Librarianship. She was later head librarian at the Avis G. Williams branch of the DeKalb County Public Library. On June 1, 1970, an IRS agent visited the library and asked Ms. Brown if it would be possible to tag certain books as "militant and subversive" so that patrons who checked them out could be identified and tracked. Mrs. Brown resisted the proposal and informed the agent that she believed that any public library patron had the right to privacy regarding his or her choice of reading material. The incident was widely publicized and reported in many newspaper and magazine articles. Mrs. Brown appeared on the Today show and CBS news and was honored by the ACLU for her actions. She had two daughters from her first marriage, Rebecca Brown Corwin and Gretchen Brown Rossman. Later in life Tomlin E. Brown moved to Saint Simons Island in Georgia. Her second husband was Letson Coggan. Mrs. Brown died February 27, 1994.
From the description of Tomlin E. Brown papers, 1963-1983 (bulk July-August, 1970). (Concord Public Library). WorldCat record id: 676953605
