Houston's Lee P. Brown A Can-Do Mayor For A Can-Do City - Houston, Texas

Ebony, Jan, 1999 by Kevin Chappell

Cow bells clank and people hoot and holler as Houston Mayor Lee P. Brown wraps up his pep talk to volunteers preparing for the city's annual Livestock Show and Rodeo. "I'm one of you," Brown says to the gathering of folks clad in big boots, big-buckle belts and even bigger brimmed hats.

A Black man with roots in D.C., New York City and Atlanta declaring his oneness with a roomful of homegrown Houstonians might seem strange to some. But the 61-year-old politician's uncanny ability to become one with even the toughest crowds, and have the union seem as natural as it is peculiar, as true as it is tried, is one of the reasons he has risen from the son of migrant grape pickers to become the first African-American mayor of Houston.

His ascension to political prominence in the heart of Texas has as much to do with the strength of his honesty and candidness as it does the effectiveness of his policies and programs: Brown's reserved, confident nature is rare in the mudslinging world of '90s politics. It has helped propel him to top positions in New York City and Atlanta (where he led both cities' police departments), and in Washington, D.C., as President Clinton's U.S. drug czar.

Now in Houston, Brown has continued to break down many racial and cultural barriers, and has helped usher in a more harmonious relationship among the city's diverse residents. His election victory last year successfully brought together Houston's Black, White and Hispanic communities. And while he has his share of critics, who continue to use tactics aimed at division, Brown has been able to rise above their attacks and convince seemingly everyone--from the gas station attendant to the oil baron that he is one of them.

The mayor has deep praise for Houston, a city that has proven, he believes, that it is open to new people and new ideas. "It's a city where if you bring something to the table, you can become a player," he says. "In many cities you are kind of locked out if you're not homegrown ... That's not the case here. What you bring to the table is what's important ... There are opportunities here for anyone."

His trailblazing journey has caused outsiders to take another look at Texas, a state where three of the largest cities--Houston, Dallas and Arlington--now have Black mayors. And while he realizes he's now under the brightest spotlight of his life, he says he is approaching it the same way he has approached everything in his life. "You make some modifications, but over a period of time I have developed certain priorities in life," he says. "I use those priorities to guide what I do. I've developed certain principles that help make my decision-making very applicable wherever I go. My priorities are my God first, my family and my job. So there is no conflict in anything in my life."

Born in Wewoka, Okla., Brown's life had all of the makings to be much different than it is today. When he was 5 years old, his family loaded all of their belongings on the back of an old pickup truck and moved to California, where he spent his formidable years living on a grape farm in the small rural town of Fowler. "We ended up with our first house in an old barn, where we used an old sheet to separate the Brown's side of the barn from others," he says. "When we finally got a house, it was a one-bedroom house with seven kids and mother and father. There were six boys. We would sleep in an old army tent. The ground was a hard floor. We had to pump our water. We had to chop our wood. We had to have an outhouse. We were busy. We had to go out and work all the time. Even in elementary school, we'd be in the cotton patches, picking cotton, and in the grape field, picking grapes. When school was out, I would go mow lawns to make a quarter. We were poor, like migrant farm workers."

Brown might still be a migrant grape picker if not for his mother, who always pushed him to get a good education. "If I had not gone to college and gotten an education, I would not be where I am today," says Brown, who received a football scholarship to Fresno State University and later worked his way through San Jose State University, where he obtained a master's degree, and the University of California at Berkeley, where he earned a second master's degree and a Ph.D.

Brown says his mother and father then--and his family now--have helped keep his priorities in order. He has four children and nine grandchildren. When he's not spending his free time with his family, he and his second wife, Frances Young Brown, a schoolteacher, like to walk, go to the movies and "do nothing," he says. "My idea of a good time is to do nothing."

But free time has been a scarce commodity for Brown since becoming mayor. For Brown, guiding Houston into the 21st century means working overtime to help the city reach its true potential. "I see it as a city that, in perception and reality, can be a premiere world-class city," Brown says of Houston, which is the fourth-largest city in America, and has the country's largest seaport in foreign tonnage. "We have everything that it takes. We have all of the ingredients right now. The perception's not there ... Most people still have the perception of Houston as a cowboy town with tumbleweeds downtown."