List of Famous people who died in 1961

In 1950, Oliver Brown was recruited to be part of the Topeka NAACP legal action to desegregate public elementary schools in the city. At the time, Brown was a welder for the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad and was studying to become a minister. Attorney Charles Scott, who was his childhood friend, asked him to join the roster of parents who would become plaintiffs in the organization’s case against the Topeka Board of Education.

Maya Deren, born Eleonora Derenkowska, was a Ukrainian-born American experimental filmmaker and important promoter of the avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s. Deren was also a choreographer, dancer, film theorist, poet, lecturer, writer, and photographer.

Edgar Allan Poe was Attorney General of the State of Maryland from 1911 to 1915. He was born in Baltimore, the son of former Maryland Attorney General John Prentiss Poe. He was named for his second cousin, twice removed, the celebrated author Edgar Allan Poe, who died in 1849.

Anna Mary Robertson Moses, known by her nickname Grandma Moses, was an American folk artist. She began painting in earnest at the age of 78 and is often cited as an example of an individual who successfully began a career in the arts at an advanced age. Her works have been shown and sold in the United States and abroad and have been marketed on greeting cards and other merchandise. Moses' paintings are displayed in the collections of many museums. Sugaring Off was sold for US$1.2 million in 2006.

Friedrich Krebs was the mayor of Frankfurt, Germany from 1933 to 1945. In March 1933, Krebs, a fervent anti-Semite and Nazi, ousted the previous mayor, Ludwig Landmann, who was Jewish. Within two weeks Krebs fired all Jewish city employees, even before the German Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service removed Jews from government service.