Black woman mayor lands $500,000 grant for complex in Mississippi

Jet, June 3, 2002

When she was a child in Toledo, Ohio, Yvonne Brown would spend summers with her grandmother in Tchula, MS, a poor town in the poorest state of the union.

There wasn't much to do or see except the vestiges of rampant poverty. A high unemployment rate kept the streets clear of many automobiles. Instead of busy shoppers in stores, there were only rundown, decrepit and empty buildings in the downtown section and signs of despair everywhere else.

When she married Robert Brown after his graduation from Dallas Theology Seminary, the eager, energetic couple headed to--where else?--Tchula. The pair believed that they could bring change and pride to a community devastated decades ago by slavery, the Ku Klux Klan and down-home Southerners.

She has lived in the small town for seven years. After being elected mayor of Tchula two years ago, she landed the $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Development Authority to build the town complex.

She is the first Black Republican woman mayor in the state.

She hopes to use the grant to erect a building to include a new City Hall, fire station and police department.

She recalls that the original City Hall building was condemned before she became mayor of Tchula.

Her biggest campaign expense was $395 for a 3-by-6 foot sign of her and President George W. Bush.

Now she has presented a $14 million stimulus package to federal officials. The funds will be spread out over three years to address problems the town has with the infrastructure, substandard housing and the environment.

"We need to get all these things in place before we can invite businesses to come to our town," she says.

Mayor Brown also points out, "It's a matter of looking around us. This is where we are. We can do better. We can move forward."

As an eager-beaver Republican, she travels regularly to the nation's capital to confer with officials on her town problems.

She works like she's on a non-stop mission. "This town will change, even if I have to pull it kicking and screaming," she says.

Easily a most impressive minority symbol for her party, Mayor Brown continues to outline plans and programs for her town of about 2,000 from a small office in her husband's church, a renovated grocery store.

"People don't like change," Brown notes. "And I make no apologies for my aggressiveness."