ALL PHOTOS EXCEPT THE LAST ONE, COURTESY THE KNOXVILLE NEWS-SENTINEL
"Since I was a youngster, I liked reading about current events."
Growing up in East Knoxville, Daniel Brown had a dream. He was just a little boy in a comfortable home on East Vine Street in the African-American neighborhood of the city. He wanted to be in public life, helping people in his community.
A generation later, he helps them and thousands more.
He is the mayor of Knoxville, Tennessee. The first African-American mayor in the city's history. The first African-American mayor of a major city in all of East and Middle Tennessee.
And he is very humbled by the distinction.
"I don't think of myself as Knoxville's black mayor," he said in a recent interview with the Sons and Daughters of Douglass website. "I am everybody's mayor, charged with representing all the citizens of the city. It's a responsibility I accept freely and understand completely, because it is understanding that has brought African-Americans as a people to where we are today. There's still work to be done, but we are moving in the right direction."
To nurture the dream that would ultimately lead him to public service, Brown credits the only three influences in his early life.
DANIEL BROWN, BEING CONGRATULATED BY FELLOW KNOXVILLE CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS, UPON HIS SELECTION AS KNOXVILLE MAYOR
"Home, school and church," he says proudly and immediately. "I grew up in a very good home with my mother, my grandmother and my two brothers. My father passed away when I was 10 years old and my mother was determined that we boys would have a strong father figure in our lifes. Our stepfather worked for the Southern Railroad, and both he and my mother gave us, what I consider, a normal life growing up."
"We would have family discussions at the dinner table every night about different current events," Brown remembers. I always like to read the newspaper, and read about what was going on around the country and the world. It always fascinated me, and we all formed opinions about current events. There were some lively discussions that now, I can appreciate having back then."
It was at school that young Daniel Brown first learned how to put his inquisitive mind to work.
"We grew up not too far from the old Austin High School, later Austin-East High School," he says. "It's now Vine Middle School, and it's good to see it still educating young people. As I grew up, I started watching CNN, C-SPAN, and listening to the local news, then the national news. As I got older, I started being able to put local politics in perspective and how they relate to national and world politics."
"It was very eye-opening."
Although he does remember some African-Americans being on the old Knox County court, now the county commission, Brown says he remembers the African-American pioneers that paved the way for people of color in Knoxville's mostly all-white political structure.
THEOTIS ROBINSON, JR ------------------------------------------ CASEY JONES
"The first black person on (the Knoxville) city council was Theotis Robinson," Brown says, "and Casey Jones replaced him on council. Casey and I were the same age, but he graduated a year ahead of me in high school. Prior to that, we didn't have many people of color running for anything."
Brown says, he never thought it possible that an African-American could ever sit in the most important chair in Knoxville.. that of the mayor's office.
"As you know, there is not a majority black population inside the Knoxville city limits, and most cities with African-American mayors have a majority black population, or at least 40 per cent," he says. "Since we don't have at least that percentage in Knoxville, so I didn't think it would happen for quite a while, if it happened at all. I think Casey did run for mayor one, and there may have been others back in the 1800's, but these days African-American mayors are elected in cities that have large or majority black populations, which is not here in Knxoville."
So, how did it happen? It is almost as if Knoxvillians went to sleep one night and woke up the next morning with the first African-American mayor East Tennessee has ever had.
Turns out, it took the Knoxville city council to bring about the distinction.
MAYOR BROWN, BEING CONGRATULATED BY KNOX COUNTY MAYOR TIM BURCHETT (LEFT), AND NEW TENNESSEE GOVERNOR BILL HASLAM (RIGHT)
"Mayor Bill Haslam had just been elected governor of Tennessee, and left a number of months on his term," Brown says. "By the Knoxville city charter, council has to select one of its members to fill out the term until the next election. 5 of our members offered their names to serve as interim mayor, including me, and then we voted."
It took eleven rounds of voting in the selection process, and each time the name Daniel Brown stood out.
DANIEL BROWN, BEING CONGRATULATED BY FELLOW KNOXVILLE CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS UPON BEING SELECTED MAYOR
"My numbers were pretty high each round," Brown recalls. "I started out with, I think, 2 votes from my fellow council members, then 3, then back to 2, then it jumped up to 4. It would take at least 5 votes, and I consistently stayed at 4. Some of the other council members eventually dropped out, and when one last person withdrew, that put me over the hump with the 5 votes I needed."
"I really didn't know it that day, because we weren't supposed to talk to each other," he says. "I always said to people 'I knew I had at least one vote and that would be my own, but I didn't know how the others voted until the end."
"As they say.. the rest is history."
Mayor Daniel Brown's brief, historic term will end on December 17th. In fact, there will be a runoff in the race for Knoxville mayor on November 8th, between Madeline Rogero and Mark Padgett.
"We were asked by the vice-mayor back during the selection process, if we planned on running for a full term as mayor," Brown remembers. "All of us, including me, said no, and I'm going to try to remain true to that. I do have a lot of people asking me every day, encouraging me to run, but I think, no. I answered no, so I don't think so."
KNOXVILLE - KNOX COUNTY, CITY-COUNTY BUILDING
So, what is it like being the mayor of East Tennessee's largest city?
"We have some very good people," Brown says. "They are very familiar with our policy. Mayor Haslam had left a letter on the desk to whomever the mayor would be when he left. It said 'keep some good people around you, and don't take yourself too seriously.' That's good advice. Right now, we're working on the city budget, and many cities are having to raise taxes.. they're laying off city workers. We are not having to do either of those, which is a good thing."
In fact, Mayor Brown submitted a budget of $172.1 million, that features no layoffs, a 2.5 percent salary increase for city employees, $11 million towards employee pensions ($2 million more than the current year), and $34.3 million in capital projects all across the city. His budget will have to be approved by the city council.
Where does Knoxville's African-American mayor see the city in 20 years?
"That's an interesting question," Brown says. "I think that Knoxville is on the cutting edge where we're developing downtown, where people are actually moving to and living. There are more shops and more actcivities going on, and we also need to recruit new industries to increase employment. The city grew by 4,000 people with this last census, and it's obvious that people like our valleys with the University of Tennessee, Oak Ridge. They like our mountains at Gatlinburg. Our place in the next 20 years should be in the areas of technology and sustainable growth to support that."
Although Mayor Brown is mayor of all of Knoxville, he has not forgotten his roots. East Knoxville has never escaped the grips of crime.
"I can remember the perception about East Knoxville, but you have crime everywhere, and a lot of it as everybody knows, is drug-related," he says. "The best way to attack crime anywhere is through neighborhood organizations. In East Knoxville, you have a lot of decent, hard-working folk who live there, and the perception that it is crime-ridden is incorrect. Calvin, you should know that, you were in the news media for many years. The biggest problem anywhere in the city is drug use, drug sales, and I don't know how to combat that. If I did, I could make a million. We have a lot of good, hard-working police officers who do know how to fight it, and they're doing the best they can, but we need residents to help be their eyes and ears when they're not in an area."
Mayor Brown is also aware of the traditions in the African-American community, particularly having gone to Austin High School on the former McCalla Avenue, now Martin Luther King Drive.
DOUGLASS FOOTBALL TEAM PRACTICE
"I remember that we played Douglass in Kingsport in football and basketball," he says. "I also remember when we played Booker T. Washington down in Chattanooga in football. I wasn't on the team, but I went as a spotter and reporter for the newspaper. It was a close game and we did win, but people started throwing rocks at us. There were some gret rivalries at all these black schools from Kingsport and Johnson City, on down to Chattanooga."
"I'm glad that Douglass High still has their alumni association," says Brown. "It's good to keep those associations going, because folks need to stay in touch with their histories. I've got some good friends in the Douglass association. We need to stay connected with our histories, not just in Black History Month, but all year long. It's important not just for the adults, but for the young people, too."
The mayor also found the idea of one building housing all of a municipality's non-profit agencies intriguing, but admits, in a city the size of Knoxville, it would not be practical.
"That idea works better in smaller communities," he says. "It's a great way to save money, but in bigger cities, the size of the agencies all under one roof, might be cost-prohibitive. I think it's great that Kingsport was able to adapt a building to help its citizens centralize their non-profit needs, and I think it's admirable that they were able to put the old African-American school building to good use. There is always a use for historical buildings like that, especially in the black community."
It's impossible to tell if we have heard the last of Daniel Brown in the politics of East Tennessee government. But one thing is for sure. He knows his place in history, because that history is NOW.
"You have to have a steady home life, a steady educational foundation, and a steady life in the church community," he says.
"No city can survive without those, and hopefully we can continue to offer those opportunities for the citizens of Knoxville, Tennessee."
