Mayoral race begins

Fri, May 20, 2005

By JACK MORSE  The Brunswick News

Elaine Brown, who promotes herself as a former chairman of the Black Panther Party, said Thursday she intends to run for mayor of Brunswick in the nonpartisan November election.

Brown, who came to Brunswick from Atlanta during the Group of Eight Sea Island Summit and decided to remain, opened a campaign headquarters on Altama Avenue and did what most candidates do – called a news conference.

She formally announced her candidacy – and her hope to become the city's first black and first female mayor – Thursday.

"This is an opportunity to address contradictions that exist throughout the country with respect to wealth and poverty, black and white," she said. "I think Brunswick presents itself as an opportunity not only for blacks, but for blacks and whites and other people to recognize what we might be able to do on a larger scale."

Brown was born in Philadelphia and moved to California during the 1960s, when she was 21. There she did a lot of things, she said, like sell books, work as a cocktail waitress – and join the Black Panther Party, the sometimes violent political organization.

"The black power movement was overwhelming the country at the time," Brown said. "As a black person in America , (joining the Black Panthers) was a natural evolution of my own life."

In 1989 she moved to France , where she lived what she characterized as a luxurious life for seven years.

She eventually moved to Atlanta where she wrote occasional articles for a newspaper. She said she has written several books and now travels the country to speak.