Rebel Women: Elaine Brown

Elaine Brown in 2010 at a rally against the killing of Oscar Grant (Photo: Steve Rhodes)

Elaine Brown, an American prison activist, writer and singer, was the first woman chair of the Black Panther Party.

Brown was born 22 March 1943 and grew up in the poor, black inner city of North Philadelphia with her mother Dorothy Clark. Despite living in poverty, Brown studied classical piano and ballet for many years at a predominantly white elementary school.

She dropped out of university and moved to Los Angeles, California, to become a songwriter. She supported herself by working as a cocktail waitress at a strip club, The Pink Pussycat.

As Brown became more focused on politics, she began working for the radical newspaper Harambee. She soon became the first representative of the Black Student Alliance at the Black Congress in California.

In April 1968, after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., she attended her first meeting of the Los Angeles chapter of the Black Panther Party.

Brown immersed herself in the Black Panther Party and ideas of black self-organisation against police violence and all forms racism and imperialism. She studied revolutionary literature and sold party newspapers, helping set the Party’s first Free Breakfast for Children program in Los Angeles. Brown was also active in the party’s Free Busing to Prisons Program and Free Legal Aid Program.

In 1968, Brown was commissioned by David Hilliard, the Party chief of staff, to record her songs on an album, Seize the Time.

Brown was part of a U.S. People’s Anti-Imperialist Delegation which visited China in 1970, along with prominent party member Eldridge Cleaver.

In 1971, Brown was appointed as editor of The Black Panther, the party’s main publication, becoming Minister of Information and the Party’s central committee.

In 1973, Brown was commissioned to record more songs by Black Panther Party founder Huey P. Newton. These songs resulted in the album Until We’re Free.

Brown unsuccessfully ran for the Oakland city council in 1973, getting 30 percent of the vote and expanding support for the panthers in black, working class communities. She ran again in 1975, losing again with 44 percent of the vote.

When Newton fled to Cuba to avoid criminal charges in 1974, he appointed Brown to lead the Black Panther Party—the only woman to do so. By this point, the Party was in decline She chaired the Black Panther Party from 1974-77, working to promote other women, challenge sexism and make the party more receptive to women’s demands.

In her memoir, A Taste of Power, Brown recalled, “A woman in the Black Power movement was considered, at best, irrelevant. A woman asserting herself was a pariah. If a black woman assumed a role of leadership, she was said to be eroding black manhood, to be hindering the progress of the black race. She was an enemy of the black people…. I knew I would have to muster something mighty to manage the Black Panther Party.”

In 1977, she managed Lionel Wilson’s victorious campaign to become Oakland’s first black mayor. During that time Brown founded the Panther’s Liberation School, which was recognised by the state of California as a model school.

Brown stepped down from chairing the Black Panther Party less than a year after Newton’s return from Cuba in 1977. She left Oakland with her daughter, Ericka, and moved to Los Angeles.

Brown began to devote her energies to the campaign for prison reform, studying law from 1980-83 at university in Los Angeles.

In 1996, Brown moved to Atlanta, Georgia, and founded Fields of Flowers. The non-profit organisation provided educational opportunities for impoverished African-American children.

In 1998, she co-founded the grassroots group Mothers Advocating Juvenile Justice to support children being prosecuted as adults in the state of Georgia.

She also set up the Michael Lewis Legal Defense Committee. Michael Lewis, also known as “Little B”, was sentenced to life in prison at the age of 13 for a murder he did not commit. After a 27-year long campaign, Michael Lewis was released in 2023, at 40 years old.  

In 2003, Brown co-founded the National Alliance for Radical Prison Reform, which helps families visit loves ones in prisons and supports prisoners to find employment. 

In March 2007, Brown announced her bid to be the 2008 Green Party presidential nominee. Her platform focused on the needs of working-class families, increasing public funding and  the removal of troops from Iraq.

In late 2007, she resigned from the Green Party. Brown found that the Party remained dominated by whites who had “no intention of using the ballot to actualise real social progress, and will aggressively repel attempts to do so.”

In 2010, inmates in more than seven Georgia prisons used contraband mobile phones to organise a nonviolent strike for better prison conditions. Brown became their “closest adviser outside prison walls”.

Brown is still active as the head of a not-for-profit organisation which promotes cooperative enterprises which give employment to ex-prisoners and builds affordable homes in Oakland.