Maisie Brown
2001–
In 2022, Maisie Brown helped with the Jackson, Mississippi water crisis, leading the effort to deliver drinking water to residents unable to access the city’s distribution centers. Clean drinking water had been an issue since 2010 when a winter storm broke mains and caused a widespread water outage. The water failed an EPA testing in 2012 and the city was unable to fix the system. In 2021, rain caused flooding during which raw water contaminated the water treatment system. At age 21, Brown was one of eight Glamour Magazine Women of the Year in 2022.
As a grassroots activist in 2022, Brown distributed 250 LifeStraw Home water-filtering pitchers to Jackson, Mississippi, households in just one month. These households were ones that were unable to get to the distribution centers. The water filters removed lead, bacteria, parasites, and silt which had infiltrated the water following the flooding. Poor minorities were the hardest hit as they live in low income areas where there is poor water infrastructure and insufficient funding. At the same time that she distributed the pitchers, she was also working on her degree in Political Science at Jackson State University.