Elaine Brown - Later Activism

Later Activism

After leaving the Black Panther Party in order to raise her daughter Erika, Brown worked on her memoir, A Taste of Power. Brown eventually returned to the struggle for black liberation, especially espousing the need for radical prison reform. From 1980 to 1983 she attended Southwestern University School of Law in Los Angeles. From 1990 to 1996, she lived in France. In 1996, Brown moved to Atlanta, Georgia and founded Fields of Flowers, Inc., a non-profit organization committed to providing educational opportunities for impoverished African-American children. In 1998, Brown co-founded the grassroots group Mothers Advocating Juvenile Justice to advocate for children being prosecuted as adults in the state of Georgia. Around the same time, Brown continued her advocacy for incarcerated youth by founding and leading the Michael Lewis Legal Defense Committee. Michael Lewis, also known as “Little B,” was sentenced to life in prison at the age of 14 for a murder that Brown believes he did not commit. Brown would eventually write a non-fiction novel, The Condemnation of Little B, which analyzes the prosecution of Michael Lewis as part of the greater problem of the increased imprisonment of black youth.

In 2003, Brown helped co-found the National Alliance for Radical Prison Reform, which helps thousands of prisoners find housing after they are released on parole, facilitates transportation for family visits to prisons, helps prisoners find employment, and raises money for prisoner phone calls and gifts. In 2005, while protesting a G-8 Summit in Sea Island, Georgia, Brown learned of the massive poverty in the nearby city of Brunswick, Georgia. Brown then attempted to run for mayor of Brunswick against Bryan Thompson. Running on the Green Party ticket, Brown hoped to become mayor in order to use her influence to bring Michael Lewis’ case to prominence, as well as to empower blacks in Brunswick. Though Brown was eventually disqualified from running and voting in Brunswick because she failed to establish residency in the city, her efforts brought widespread attention to Michael Lewis’ case.

Brown has continued her prison reform advocacy by lecturing frequently at colleges and universities in the US. From 1995 to the present, she has lectured at over forty colleges and universities, as well as numerous conferences.

In March 2007, Brown announced her bid to be the 2008 Green Party presidential nominee. Brown felt that a campaign was necessary to promote the interests of those not represented by the major political parties, especially the interests of women under 30 and African-Americans. Her platform focused on the needs of working-class families, promoting living wages for all, free health care, more funding for public education, more affordable housing, removal of troops from Iraq, improving the environment, and promoting equality. Brown intended on using her campaign to bring many minorities to the Green party in hopes that it would better represent a revolutionary force for social justice. In late 2007, Brown resigned from the Green Party, as she found that the Party remained dominated by whites who had “no intention of using the ballot to actualize real social progress, and will aggressively repel attempts to do so.”

In 2010, inmates in more than seven Georgia prisons used contraband cellphones to organize a nonviolent strike for better prison conditions, Brown became their "closest adviser outside prison walls." She "helped distill the inmate complaints into a list of demands. She held a conference call... to develop a strategy with various groups, including the Georgia chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Nation of Islam."

Brown is the mother of a grown daughter, Ericka Abram.