This past week’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago focused heavily on unlikely journeys, especially for the two individuals now at the top of the ticket.
The life stories of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz — and the improbability that the biracial daughter of immigrants and a former high school football coach could one day have a legitimate shot at being the president and vice president of the United States — had Troy Brown Sr. reflecting on his own unlikely journey to the podium at a Democratic National Convention 24 years earlier.
Brown, a longtime resident of Greenwood, was 37 at the time and on his second quixotic run for political office. The year before, he had finished a distant third in a three-person primary for lieutenant governor.
Rather than be humbled by his 13% showing in 1999, the indefatigable Brown aimed even higher in 2000. He decided to challenge Trent Lott, the U.S. Senate majority leader at the time and one of the most powerful politicians in Washington.
Even though the GOP domination in Mississippi had not yet fully taken hold, Brown was given zero chance of winning. The Democratic National Committee did not want to invest in his race. It advised him early on to get security — a Black man, he was already receiving some nasty and threatening letters — but the DNC didn’t give him any money to pay for it.
An African American car dealer in Canton lent Brown a car to use during the campaign. For protection, the candidate improvised. “I had a bat in the back of my car. That was my security.”
He says he drove 200,000 miles in less than a year, hitting every county in the state at least twice. Operating on a shoestring, he didn’t have the resources to spend on accommodations everywhere he went. “I was sleeping in parking lots.”
But he knew what he was doing was historic — the first Black since Reconstruction to represent a major party in Mississippi in a statewide race — and he thought that merited a speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, where Al Gore would be officially nominated to face George W. Bush in the presidential race.
Initially, Donna Brazile, Gore’s African American campaign manager, rejected Brown’s request. A second letter, this time from Brown’s wife, Curressia, got Brazile to change her mind. Curressia threatened to hold a press conference on the Capitol steps in Jackson on the night Gore would be speaking at the convention, and she would decry the hypocrisy of the Democrats’ claim of being more inclusive than the Republicans.
Brown was allotted five minutes at the podium on the third day of the convention. It wasn’t in prime time. Video from his speech shows many empty seats in front of him at what was then called the Staples Center.
Brown has a penchant for the theatrical. A year later, he would walk the hundred miles from Itta Bena to Jackson to deliver to the state College Board a letter protesting about conditions at Mississippi Valley State University, where he formerly worked.
At the national convention, he walked on stage holding a wooden staff, and his remarks borrowed from Moses of the Old Testament and from civil rights martyr Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Brown told the convention gathering that he had also been “to the mountaintop” and from it had seen a “new Mississippi” — prosperous, healthy and racially united.
“Together we’ll get to the new Mississippi, and when we get there, Black and white and all Mississippians, we’re gonna join hands with one another and we’re gonna say, ‘First at last, first at last. Thank God almighty, Mississippi is first at last.’”
Brown played nice with the DNC, cooperating with its rewrite of his speech to include a plug for Gore and running mate Joe Lieberman. Brown had intended to omit them, still angry over what he perceived as a snub from Gore during a campaign stop in Jackson by the presidential candidate. The DNC would send $16,000 to Brown’s campaign in its final month.
It wasn’t close to making a difference. Lott outpolled the Democratic challenger by more than 2-to-1 that November.
Brown, who has lost a half-dozen or so state and local elections since, says he has gone into all of his campaigns — even those that seemed the most far-fetched — with the expectation that he could pull off the upset. Garnering the most votes, however, is not how he defines winning. His primary goal has been to get his message out.
He challenged Trent Lott because Brown felt the Delta was being neglected. He took on entrenched Black state lawmakers because he thought they were more focused on playing the victim than working toward progress.
When Brown thinks back on being on that convention stage almost a quarter-century ago, what he most remembers is the feeling of awe over how far his life had come.
His father was a physically abusive alcoholic, who beat Brown’s mother while their two sons watched in terror. Once, when Brown was a teenager, he had had enough and punched his father during one of these episodes. His father got a butcher knife from the kitchen and slashed Brown across the face, almost costing him an eye.
Because he has dyslexia, Brown was thrown into special education classes up through high school with kids who were severely mentally handicapped. When he showed up at Rust College in Holly Springs, “I didn’t have an ACT to qualify me to drive a dump truck.”
He persevered, though, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees, raising with his wife four hard-working, accomplished children, and challenging what he describes as some of the bullies in politics.
If he has a major lesson to impart, it’s that everyone’s life, regardless of how it starts, can be redeemed, he says.
“I want people to know that regardless of how bad your life has been in the past, that it’s salvageable. You can make a positive contribution.”
- Contact Tim Kalich at 662-581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
VIDEO: Click HERE to watch Troy Brown Sr.'s five-minute speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2000. It begins at the 1:18:25 mark.
