Born: 11 November 1946, United States
Died: NA
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
The following is republished from the U.S. Congress. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
In 1992, Corrine Brown was part of the first group of African-American lawmakers to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida since 1876. During her congressional career, Brown worked to bring federal programs to her Jacksonville district using her seats on the Transportation and Infrastructure and the Veterans’ Affairs Committees. She also pushed civil rights reforms both at home in Jacksonville and abroad. Brown believed her mission in the House went beyond her history-making election in 1992. “It means a lot more than the glamor of being elected,” she once remarked. “Once you’re elected it means getting things done. It means representing people that have not been part of the process.”
Corrine Brown was born in Jacksonville, Florida, on November 11, 1946. She grew up in the city’s Northside neighborhood and graduated from Stanton High School. Brown earned a bachelor’s degree in 1969 and a master’s degree in 1971, both from Florida Agriculture and Mechanical University. In 1972, Brown graduated with an educational specialist degree from the University of Florida. She taught at the University of Florida and Edward Waters College before moving to Florida Community College in Jacksonville, where she taught and served as a guidance counselor from 1977 to 1992. She also opened her own travel agency in Jacksonville. Brown raised her daughter, Shantrel, as a single mother.
Brown was introduced to politics during her college years at Florida A&M University. There she met Gwen Cherry, the first African-American woman to serve in the state house of representatives. Cherry was Brown’s close friend, college sorority sister, and political mentor. Brown was also inspired by campus politics. “The board of regents took two or three programs, the nursing school and law school, from FAMU,” she recollected. “That told me we needed to be politically involved.” Three years after Cherry died in a car accident, Brown won a seat in the Florida legislature and served for a decade.
In 1992, Brown made the jump from state politics and ran for the U.S. House. No African-American candidate had won election to Congress from Florida since Representative Josiah T. Walls served during Reconstruction 115 years earlier. During the redistricting process in the lead up to the 1992 elections, Brown was one of several plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit that accused state legislators of diluting Black voters in majority-White districts. She testified in favor of a map that would create several Black-majority districts. When the legislature failed to agree on a map, the court redrew the district lines. One of the new districts was just over 50 percent Black and resembled a horseshoe stretching from Jacksonville to Orlando and west through Gainesville and Ocala. Having won the lawsuit, Brown filed her candidacy to represent the northeastern Florida district, which included her hometown.
Brown faced stiff competition in the Democratic primary. Her three challengers included Arnett Girardeau, a Black state senator with 16 years’ experience; Orlando-based school guidance counselor Glennie Mills; and the only White candidate, talk show host Andy Johnson. Looking to the grassroots, Brown branched out from Jacksonville and crisscrossed the district. “I have really learned the back roads,” she noted. Brown came in first in the primary election, but since no candidate took a majority in the first round of voting, Brown went to an October runoff where she defeated Johnson.
In the general election, Brown faced Republican Don Weidner, general counsel for the Florida Physicians Association. Her campaign promised to direct federal resources to the district, fix the school system, bring jobs to the area, and protect Social Security and Medicare. On Election Day, Brown won by 18 percent of the vote. She made history that fall alongside Alcee L. Hastings and Carrie P. Meek as the first African-American lawmakers elected from Florida since Reconstruction. Although Florida changed her district borders four times, she generally won re-election with 55 percent or more of the vote.
When Brown took her seat in the 103rd Congress (1993–1995), she received assignments to three committees: Government Operations; Veterans’ Affairs; and Public Works and Transportation. In the 104th Congress (1995– 1997), she stepped down from Government Operations. She retained her seats on Public Works and Transportation (later named Transportation and Infrastructure) and Veterans’ Affairs for her entire career. Brown chaired Transportation’s Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials during the 110th and 111th Congresses (2007–2011) and became ranking member of Veterans’ Affairs in the 114th Congress (2015–2017).
Not only was Brown one of the first Black women elected from Florida, she was also part of a wave of Black lawmakers elected in 1992 that increased the membership of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) from 26 to 40. Brown was elected the CBC’s first vice chair in the 109th Congress (2005–2007). The 1992 election cycle also saw huge growth in the number of women in Congress, and Brown was an active member of the Women’s Caucus as well.
Brown’s main priority in Congress was to improve the economy in northern Florida by steering federal aid to her district. Using earmarks—the practice in which lawmakers fund specific projects and programs using large discretionary congressional spending bills—Brown led the effort to construct an $86 million federal courthouse in Jacksonville. She testified before the Transportation and Appropriations Committees to secure federal dollars to repair the Fuller Warren Bridge in Jacksonville, where Interstate 95 crossed the St. John’s River. She later directed money to a new mental health and rehabilitation center in Jacksonville and funded a biofuel conversion project. Brown attributed these successes to “hard work, persistence, and a thorough understanding of the appropriations process.” When Congress imposed a moratorium on earmarks in the 112th Congress (2011–2013), Brown did not alter course. She vowed “to continue what I have been doing every single day since my first election in 1992, specifically bring home a fair share of the federal dollars.”
From her seat on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Brown fought to initiate Florida rail projects to meet the state’s booming transportation needs. While working on the 1998 surface transportation bill, she helped orchestrate a nearly 60-percent increase in funding for federal transportation programs back home. Throughout her career, she frequently advocated for a robust Amtrak budget. During debate over a 2006 appropriations bill, Brown successfully incorporated an amendment that ensured funding for 18 Amtrak routes across the country. “If we do not fund Amtrak, we will leave 25 million people waiting for a train that is not coming,” she said on the House Floor. As chair of the Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials, she worked with the full committee’s chair, James Louis Oberstar of Minnesota, to craft the Rail Safety Improvement Act, which provided funding for computer-assisted train operation and placed limits on work hours for rail employees, among other safety improvements. It was signed into law in 2008. Brown also frequently defended the CSX Corporation, a railway freight company based in her district.
Less than a month after the September 11, 2001 attacks, Brown introduced the Port and Maritime Security Act of 2001, which sought to improve security procedures in the country’s seaports. As the top Democrat on the Transportation Committee’s Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Marine Transportation, she served on the conference committee for a similar bill, the Maritime Transportation Security Act, which became law in 2002.
With a large military presence in her district, most notably the Jacksonville Naval Air Station, Brown regularly supported defense funding. Brown described the military as a place where working-class Americans could find opportunities unavailable elsewhere, and she wanted more resources for personnel training. As a member of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, she was also attentive to the needs of women veterans and veteran’s health care. Brown sponsored bills strengthening infant and maternal care, as well as legislation increasing access to breast cancer treatment. In 2011, her bill to grant a Congressional Gold Medal to the Montford Point Marines—the first African Americans to serve in the Marine Corps—was signed into law. She declared it to be “one of the proudest moments I have ever experienced in all my years of service.”
At times, Brown addressed issues far outside her district. In 1993, shortly after arriving on Capitol Hill, she worked with other Florida and CBC Members to push the William J. Clinton administration to apply economic pressure on Haiti to restore its democratic government by re-installing deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Brown saw military force in Haiti as an option of last resort, preferring to use foreign aid to encourage change. She urged U.S. officials to offer political asylum to thousands of Haitians who arrived in the United States looking for help. Brown also took up the cause of Liberians, pushing to extend temporary visa status for thousands who came to America after a civil war in Liberia during the early 1990s. “It seems as if we have two policies, one for people from Africa and Haiti and one for everybody else,” she said. “Our policy pertaining to immigration is very racist in nature.” In 2000, she gave an impassioned speech on the House Floor imploring Congress to budget more money to fight the global AIDS epidemic. “AIDS in Africa is a direct threat to our country, especially in today’s interconnected world,” she observed.
Brown had an outspoken legislative style. In 2004, Brown briefly lost her speaking privileges on the House Floor when she accused Republicans of executing a “coup d’état” and of stealing the contested 2000 presidential election results in Florida. The House had her words taken down, a parliamentary procedure invoked when a Member has violated House decorum—in this case, accusing another Member of a crime. The House also voted to have her words stricken from the Congressional Record. Brown remained unapologetic about the incident. “If they’re going to take down my words for telling the truth, that’s OK,” she responded.
Although Brown ran into ethical and legal trouble during her career, her constituents continued to return her to office, and she ran unopposed in 2006 and 2008. As she approached her primary election in 2016, however, she faced two challenges. A state court ordered Florida to redraw its districts after ruling that the existing borders purposefully segregated minority voters into a single district. Brown’s new district stretched east to west along the Georgia border from Jacksonville to Tallahassee, and though it was 45 percent African-American, Brown lost much of her traditional constituency along the St. John’s River. Secondly, in July 2016, a grand jury charged Brown and her chief of staff with 24 counts of mail and wire fraud, conspiracy, obstruction, and filing false tax returns. The charges stemmed from Brown’s tie to a charity which provided scholarships to low-income students. The lawsuit alleged that Brown and several associates siphoned off money to pay for personal expenses.
A few weeks after her indictment, Brown lost a three-way race in the Democratic primary. On May 11, 2017, Brown was convicted on 18 fraud and tax charges. She reported to Coleman Federal Correctional Institute in Sumter County, Florida, on January 29, 2018, to begin a five-year sentence. Two years later, Brown was released from prison after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. On May 7, 2021, a federal appeals court, citing a trial error, overturned her conviction and ordered a new trial.