The Shadows Tried to Swallow Elaine Brown. I’m Bringing Her Back.
She was overqualified and they knew it. Yet she still set herself on fire and they let her burn. We will no longer be thrown to the shadows.
Ursula Burns, the first Black woman CEO of a Fortune 500 company, transformed Xerox into a services powerhouse, only to be replaced by Jeff Jacobson in early 2017 amid pressure from Carl Icahn and the company’s split strategy (Gelles, 2016; The Hour, 2018). Rosalind Brewer, CEO of Walgreens Boots Alliance, stepped down in 2023 under the guise of a “mutual agreement” after just two years, despite the company’s stock having dropped nearly 54% during her tenure (Reuters, 2023; Investopedia, 2023). Bozoma Saint John, Netflix’s Chief Marketing Officer, was ousted after delivering record-breaking campaigns like Beyoncé’s Homecoming and replaced by Marian Lee; reports cited “culture fit” and “internal tensions” despite clear wins (TheWrap, 2022; NextTV, 2022). Sounds like they didn’t like an out loud, proud Black woman. Sheila Johnson, co-founder of BET, watched as cultural control slipped away after selling the network for $3 billion, a move tied to the marital collapse fueled by Bob Johnson’s affair with Debra L. Lee (Johnson, 2023; Los Angeles Times, 2023; Wistajohnson, 2024).
Do you see the pattern? Black women show up when everything is burning down. We run toward the flames, we save the crying child, we get the programs back on track, and we make the company profitable again. And then the second it’s safe, the second they can step back in, we’re erased.
Elaine Brown: The Forgotten Chairwoman
This is where Elaine Brown comes in, and we’re not letting her slip into the shadows.
Born in Philadelphia in 1943, she attended Philadelphia’s elite Girls’ High School and later studied at Temple University, UCLA, and Mills College (Brown, 1992). She trained as a classical pianist, wrote music, worked in Hollywood, and still gave her life to politics and activism. Quick pause: the baby was talented, okay? I know I’m supposed to stick to the facts, but put a Black woman in any era, any time of day, and we will take full advantage of it down to the nanosecond. When she joined the Black Panther Party in 1968, she brought not just intellect and discipline but also the ability to move through elite white spaces and grassroots struggles. She was Huey’s main girl, his woman.
By the time Huey Newton fled into exile, it was Brown’s education, organizational skill, and political clarity that positioned her to lead. She wasn’t a placeholder. She was qualified; more than competent; to carry the Panthers forward. And still, the men could not accept her authority (Brown, 1992).
Elaine Brown became the first and only woman to lead the Black Panther Party in 1974, after Newton fled to Cuba to avoid criminal charges (Brown, 1992). For three years, she carried the movement on her back: survival programs, schools, clinics, housing, and political campaigns. She turned the Panthers from a movement under siege into one with real community power. And Black women, we know this story; we’ve all been the ones holding it together for them. STOP IT! NO MORE.
Despite this, the men never respected her. Brown herself wrote, “A woman in the Black Power movement was considered, at best, irrelevant. A woman asserting herself was a pariah” (Brown, 1992, p. xx). When Newton came back in 1977, she was immediately pushed out. She went to him, her man, and told him how the men were degrading and abusing women in the Party, treating them like property. He sided with them. Not because she failed, but because she was a woman. She writes that Panthers even physically assaulted her when she asserted her authority (Brown, 1992). The revolution was comfortable with Black women as caretakers, never as leaders.
Misogyny and Sexual Profiling Inside the Panthers
The Party fought white supremacy but upheld male supremacy. Women were pushed into cooking, childcare, and clerical work, while men carried the guns and titles (Joseph, 2007). Even when women led programs or bore arms, they were rarely credited.
Women were also sexually profiled. Lumsden (2009) described them as “good mothers with guns,” valued only when they reinforced stereotypes. Theoharis (1998) showed how sexual pressure was normalized, with women coerced into relationships as proof of loyalty. Brown herself was expected to submit to Panther men sexually and was punished when she refused (Brown, 1992).
That was the hypocrisy: they demanded freedom from white supremacy while practicing patriarchy on their own women.
Psychology of Erasure
As bell hooks told us in Ain’t I a Woman (1981), too many so-called Black liberation movements failed to liberate Black women because they were obsessed with freeing Black men while leaving patriarchy intact. They wanted freedom as men, not freedom with us. And here’s the truth: they never even mentally freed themselves. Their minds were still chained to the same patriarchal lies they claimed to fight. That’s why Panther men could accept Brown only while Newton was gone. The minute he came back, they chose him, even if it meant letting the programs rot, because the thought of a Black woman in power was too much.
And nothing has changed. Black women are still dying on medical tables, in the streets, and in our homes (CDC, 2023). We are still not represented in boardrooms, precincts, or Congress. Black men are on social media telling the world why they prefer white women, when we never even asked. We are the only group of women in human history whose own men have been conditioned to reject us. And here’s the irony: the world copies us. Our bodies, our lips, our curves. And science itself reveals what they deny: all humans trace back to a single African woman, “Mitochondrial Eve” (Cann, Stoneking, & Wilson, 1987). We carry the Eve gene. We are the root of humanity. We are the mothers of civilization. Yet we are still treated like we are disposable.
Pull to the Present
The pattern hasn’t gone anywhere. Black women are the most educated demographic in America, yet we carry the highest student debt, nearly $39,000 on average compared to $31,000 for white women (AAUW, 2023). The median wealth of single Black women is just $1,700, compared to $27,000 for single white women (Insight Center, 2022). We are killed at more than twice the rate of white women (CDC, 2023). We are the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs, yet we receive less than 1% of venture capital funding (ProjectDiane, 2023).
Vice President Kamala Harris proves the point. She’s the only Black woman to ever reach the vice presidency. And what has she gotten for it? Relentless racist and sexist attacks. She’s been called everything but a child of God, even when she’s been right about what is happening to American democracy every single day (Friedman, 2024; CAWP, 2023). Research shows many white Americans even vote against policies that would help their own families, like healthcare or social programs, just to make sure Black people don’t benefit (Frank, 2004; Hooghe & Dassonneville, 2018; Tesler, 2016). It’s the same script: better to lose everything than to let a Black woman lead. And how many Black men have convicted her of not being Black enough? Or locking up Black men on trumped-up charges, petty weed criminalities that weren’t even true without doing research? Only by listening to their white male counterparts? Sound familiar?
From boardrooms to cultural institutions to revolutionary movements, Black women are pushed into crises as saviors and martyrs. We save companies, families, and revolutions. We bring everything back from the edge. Then we are erased, replaced, and punished. Elaine Brown’s story is not just history; it is prophecy. It foreshadowed what happened to Brewer, Bozoma, Johnson, and Harris.
If we keep allowing her story to stay in the dark, we’ll keep riding this same Ferris wheel. Not on my watch. Not on this Substack.
We are not Mammies meant to soothe and patch until men reclaim the spotlight. We are not placeholders. We are not scaffolding for everyone else’s empires. We are permanent leaders. Elaine Brown proved it. They tried to bury her story.
Let me REMIND you.
References (APA 7th Edition)
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