Elaine Brown, former chair of the Black Panther Party and founder of dozens of revolutionary programs, might be getting a West Oakland intersection named after her.

According to Oaklandside, the Oakland City Council is considering a resolution next month to rename the intersection at 7th and Campbell streets “Elaine Brown Way” after former Black Panther Party chair, Elaine Brown. Brown is responsible for creating and supporting dozens of innovative community programs throughout her career, many of which became models for state and city government programs. One of her most recent projects include a mammoth 32,000 square-foot affordable housing and commercial hub in West Oakland, aptly called the Black Panther.

Brown, a singer-songwriter who grew up in inner city Philadelphia, joined the Los Angeles chapter of the Black Panther Party in 1968 after gaining a rigorous education on the Civil Rights Movement, capitalism, and communism from music executive Jay Richard Kennedy.

While in Los Angeles, Brown was instrumental in organizing the party’s first revolutionary Free Breakfast for Children Program as well as the Panthers’ free legal aid and Busing to Prisons services. Brown was also commissioned to record two albums for the Panthers and was the editor of the Southern California Black Panther publication during that time.  

Brown moved to Oakland when party founder Huey Newton directed her to run for city council in 1973 and 1975, but she lost both elections. From 1974 through 1977, Brown served as chair of the party, dealing with routine sexism by male Panthers, while Newton was hiding out in Cuba avoiding criminal charges.

In 1977, Brown succeeded at helping Lionel Wilson become Oakland’s first Black mayor. She also founded the Panther Liberation School program, which taught children about class struggle from the perspective of Black history, with sites in Berkeley and San Francisco and later an official elementary school in Oakland. Soon after Newton’s return, Brown left the party — and Oakland, fearing for her safety when a male party member broke a female Panthers’ jaw, and Newton sided with the man.

Over the next few decades, Brown lived in Los Angeles — where she wrote her memoir, A Taste of Power — and France, before settling in Georgia in 1996, where she dedicated her time to prison reform. There, she founded several groups, including Mothers Advocating Juvenile Justice, which supports Georgia children who are being prosecuted as adults, and the National Alliance for Radical Prison Reform, which helps prisoners with housing and other services and raises money for prisoner phone calls and gifts.

Brown also founded the Michael Lewis Legal Defense Committee and spent decades working to free Lewis (“Little B”) who was released on parole in 2023 at the age of 40 after serving 27 years for a murder he didn’t commit.

In 2014, Brown founded Oakland & the World Enterprises, Inc., which helps formerly incarcerated and other socio-economically marginalized people launch and sustain for-profit businesses. Last year, OAW completed construction on the Black Panther, a 32,000 square-foot, three-quarter acre affordable housing and commercial hub, which received a federal grant of over $1 million last year.

All  79 units of the Black Panther are occupied, many by single mothers with children who were previously unhoused. OAW is currently coordinating the set-up of several ground floor businesses that will employ formerly incarcerated people, including a  gym, tech center, neighborhood market, and restaurant.

Image: Elaine Brown (right) with Black Panther Party co-founder Huey Newton and his wife Gwen (left) at San Francisco International Airport, 1977. (Photo by UPI/Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)