Daniel T. Brown, the first African American mayor of Knoxville, Tennessee in the city’s 220-year history, was born at home in the Five Points area of Knoxville, Tennessee, on December 25, 1945. Brown’s early education began at Maynard Nursery School in the Mechanicsville section of Knoxville, then Eastport Elementary School. While at Vine Junior High School from 1957 to 1960 he was the sports editor of the Vine Junior Flash Newspaper.
In 1963, Brown graduated from the racially segregated Austin High School, where he was a reporter for the school’s newspaper. During this period, the Brown family, including his grandparents and his two brothers, Russell and Warren Brown, were forced out of the home the family had owned on East Vine Avenue since 1932. Their home was part of a massive urban renewal project that allowed the City of Knoxville to acquire and tear down residences in the urban renewal district. The Browns were one of more than 2,500 families, 70% of whom were African American, who were forcibly relocated to build city government buildings and other civic projects. The site remained vacant for 20 years, however, before the city finally established a park there which it named after a local Black physician, Dr. Walter Hardy.
From 1966 to 1969, Brown worked at the Levi Strauss factory in Knoxville and then at Miller’s Department Store. In 1969, at the age of 23, he was drafted into the United States Army. He served as a supply soldier in South Vietnam and completed his military tour in 1971 with an honorable discharge.
In 1990, Daniel visited Rosa Parks, the civil rights activist known for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama. He met her at the Highlander Research and Education Center, a social justice leadership training school and cultural center located in New Market, Tennessee. The visit inspired him to utilize the G.I. Bill to earn a Bachelor of Science in History from Tennessee State University (TSU) in Nashville. He then worked briefly in the Ashville, North Carolina Veterans Administration Medical Center, and post office before returning to Knoxville, where he worked in another post office until his retirement in 2001. He also served as a Knox County election worker during this period. In 1998, Brown traveled to Accra, Ghana, where he visited the grave site of the renowned African American philosopher and civil rights activist W.E.B. Dubois.
Brown entered politics in 2009 and was elected to the Knoxville City Council, representing the Sixth District, in 2010. During a special City Council meeting in 2011, Daniel was elected interim Mayor by fellow Knoxville City Council Members. He was sworn in as mayor by County Magistrate Mark Brown to serve out the unexpired term of then-Mayor Bill Haslam, who had resigned from his position because he was elected Governor of Tennessee. Daniel served as Interim Mayor from January 10, 2011, through December 17, 2011.
Daniel T. Brown is married to the former Cathy Smith, and they parented one daughter, Stephanie Nicole Burgess.
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“Daniel Brown through the years,”https://www.knoxnews.com/picture-gallery/news/local/2021/02/25/daniel-brown-through-years/4381594001/;
Sally Bernardina Seraphin, “Interview with Daniel Brown (1st African-American Mayor of Knoxville, TN),”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ba1rcOxGsY;
Tyler Whetstone, “Knoxville’s only Black mayor was forced out of his home by urban removal,” https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/politics/2021/02/25/knoxville-only-black-mayor-daniel-brown-urban-removal/4344078001/.
