Pearl River One of my favorite pictures in my office has always been one taken at the anniversary celebrations in Little Rock that coincided with a meeting of the national board, likely in the late 1980s. It’s a picture of the first four presidents of ACORN: Steve McDonald, Larry Rogers, Elena Hanggi, and Mildred Brown. Since the organization had begun in Little Rock and then expanded regionally and nationally, it wasn’t unusual that the first three presidents had come from Little Rock. McDonald from one of the earliest groups, the Vietnam Veterans Organizing Committee; Rogers from ACORN’s Centennial Neighborhood Association, the centerpiece of the “Save the City Campaign” in 1974; and Hanggi from the fight against the expansion of the Wilbur Mills Expressway. Mildred Brown broke the mold and her election as president recognized the huge growth of the organization in the 1980s when Philadelphia and the squatting campaign set the organization on fire.
Mildred was a great president and created a graceful, but strong bridge for the old organization to become the new one. She was a quieter, steadier hand for ACORN in a period of great growth and change. She oversaw a period when the organization transitioned from one-for-all centralization to closing some offices and allowing state affiliates with more resources to outpace others. As president in 1984, she led the board to the first endorsement for President and our caravan for Jesse Jackson. The Philadelphia ACORN board had always been a raucous, dynamic bunch of highly motivated and outspoken leaders forged in fire. Mildred emerged from that launching pad as a woman able to lead from the back as well as the front and find the common ground and make it hold. She was strong, but humble, and less about her ambition as president than about service.
When she stepped down, she became one of the earlier Whipple-Bell Award recipients, subsidized by ACORN to work in the Washington, DC office on policy and legislative matters. It came natural to her, and when the internship ended, she joined the staff as one of the national team representing ACORN with agencies and Congress and supporting the members when they were in the capital. Her daughter had been on the local staff of powerful Philly-based Congressman William Gray, so she wasn’t naïve about politics. She worked in DC and returned to Philadelphia when she retired. I last saw her for a visit when “The Organizer” documentary showed to a full house of old members, leaders, friends, and others in a great event. She was a star in the movie! I loved her as a person and a leader.
Mildred passed away recently. I was unable to make her memorial service, already on a plane from the West Coast, but more than one-hundred people were there, including old ACORN leaders and organizers like Kate Atkins, Bruce Dorpalen, Ali Kronley, George Butts, and Urell Spain. Craig Robbins former header organizer, ACORN regional director, and deputy field director currently helping out with ACORN International, represented us all there. As Craig and others reported, “A highlight was the eulogy given by Mildred’s granddaughter Jamilah Cook, with lots of references to ACORN, including her being “dragged” to the St. Louis convention in 1996.”
Mildred Brown was a peoples’ warrior and a great solidarity sister to us all. Her legacy is permanent, and she will be missed by all who knew her and fought along her side.
