Elaine Brown is a former Black Panther Party leader who has ventured into affordable housing projects. According to NBC Bay Area, she has led efforts to raise $80 million to open a 79-unit apartment complex in Oakland, CA, for low-income and formerly incarcerated residents.
The project has been named The Black Panther, and it is located at 1670 Seventh St. It will house ground-floor businesses, with the upper levels consisting of homes, according to NBC Bay Area.
According to the platform, 7,500 people have applied to move into the apartments, and applicants must have a household income that is 30% or below the area’s median income.
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The facility also provides amenities and resources such as free WiFi, apartment all-furnishing, and supportive services. In addition to a fitness center, the developers say the building’s design focuses on green features, including energy efficiency through rooftop solar, efficient appliances, elevators, and building mechanical systems.
The project funding has been in the pipeline for almost 10 years now, in addition to the initial challenges of getting land for the project. “We have to fight for everything, and this I hope will generate one thing: to fight for what you believe we are deserving of,” Brown said at a press conference.
In a pivotal moment for a woman in the black empowerment movement, Brown became the leader of the Black Panther Party. Brown took over as chair of the party in 1974 when founder Huey Newton went into exile in Cuba to avoid murder charges, according to reports.
“I have all the guns and the money. I can withstand challenge from without and from within,” Brown told party members when she was chosen by Newton to lead, according to her 1992 memoir, “A Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story.”
“I haven’t called you together to make threats, Comrades. I’ve called this meeting simply to let you know the realities of our situation. The fact is, Comrade Huey is in exile. The other fact is, I’m taking his place until we make it possible for him to return” she said in 1974.
“…I am, as your chairman, the leader of this party as of this moment. My leadership cannot be challenged. I will lead our party both above ground and underground. I will lead the party not only in furthering our goals but also in defending the party by any and all means.”
Brown had assumed leadership of a party that “was the target of the most violent aggression of the police forces of America,” she wrote.
Newton, who had been her lover, and fellow student Bobby Seale formed the Black Panther Party, originally the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, in 1966 to fight police brutality against the black community in Oakland. The party took on a militant stance coupled with the burgeoning pride associated with the black power movement.
The Panther Party became infamous for brandishing guns, challenging the authority of police officers, and embracing violence as a necessary by-product of revolution. The Panthers were not just about being menacing, however, as the group introduced a series of goals such as fighting for better housing, jobs and education for African-Americans.
Nevertheless, the group’s militancy made it a target of law enforcement officials and many of its members would be imprisoned and killed in gun battles with the police.
Brown, who is now 81 and a mother of one daughter, Ericka Abram, is a graduate of the Philadelphia High School for Girls and attended Temple University, UCLA, Mills College and Southwestern University School of Law, her website says. Currently residing in Oakland, California, Brown has lectured at colleges and universities across the world, and her papers have been acquired by Emory University.
In her 1992 book, she wrote about her experience as Black Panther Party leader; “A woman in the Black Power movement was considered, at best, irrelevant. A woman asserting herself was a pariah. If a black woman assumed a role of leadership, she was said to be eroding black manhood, to be hindering the progress of the black race. She was an enemy of the black people…I knew I would have to muster something mighty to manage the Black Panther Party.”
