Willie Brown

Willie Lewis Brown, Jr. (born March 20, 1934) was born in Mineola, a small segregated town in east Texas marked by racial tensions, to Minnie Collins Boyd and Lewis Brown. Brown was the fourth of five children. During Brown's childhood, mob violence periodically erupted in Mineola, keeping African Americans from voting. His first job was as a shoeshine boy in a whites-only barber shop. He later worked as a janitor, fry cook, and field hand. He learned his work ethic at a young age from his grandmother. He graduated from Mineola Colored High School, an all-Black school he later described as substandard, and left for San Francisco in

August 1951 to live with his uncle. Brown originally wanted to attend Stanford University. His interviewer from Stanford also taught at San Francisco State and was surprised by Brown’s ambition. Brown did not meet the qualifications for San Francisco State, but the professor got him enrolled on probation. Brown adjusted to college studies after working especially hard to catch up in his first semester. He joined the Young Democrats and became friends with John L. Burton. Brown originally wanted to be a math instructor but campus politics changed his ambitions. He became active in his church and the San Francisco NAACP. Brown worked as a doorman, janitor and shoe salesman to pay for college. Brown is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity established for African Americans. He also joined the ROTC.

Brown earned a bachelor's degree in political science from San Francisco State College in 1955.Brown later stated that his decision to go to law school was "more upon the avoidance of military service than anything else." He quit the ROTC and joined the National Guard reserve where he was trained as a dental hygienist. Brown attended Hastings College of the Law where he also worked as a janitor to pay for law school. Brown befriended future San Francisco Mayor George Moscone for whom Brown would later manage a campaign. Brown earned a J.D. in 1958 and was class president at Hastings.

Brown served over thirty years in the California State Assembly, fifteen years as its Speaker, and afterward, as the only African-American mayor of San Francisco. Under current California term limit law, no Speaker of the California State Assembly will ever have a longer tenure than Brown's record 15 years. Brown is a member of the Democratic Party. The San Francisco Chronicle called Brown “one of San Francisco’s most notable mayors” that had “celebrity beyond the city’s boundaries.”

His tenure as mayor is marked by a significant increase in real estate development, public works, city beautification, and other large-scale city projects. He presided over the "dot-com" era at a time when San Francisco's economy was rapidly expanding. Brown presided over the city’s most diverse administration with more Asian Americans, women, Latinos, gays, and African Americans than his predecessors. He increased San Francisco's funding of MUNI by tens of millions of dollars. He ended San Francisco's policy of punishing people for feeding the homeless. In 1996, Brown approved the Equal Benefits Ordinance that required city contractors to provide domestic partner benefits to their employees. See this story :http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/1999/02/27/MN91330.DTL and http://whygaymarriage.com/newsletter.php/3