Hi, this is Alice. He went to work as a field hand when he was 10. At 12 he started shining shoes in a whites only barber shop. It was the 1940s and Willie Brown was a black

kid in a small segregated East Texas town, Minneola, where violent racist mobs did the work of keeping African Americans

from voting.

It was not a pleasant experience, I can tell you that, but I didn't have anything really to compare it to except that I had somewhere in the residuals of my mind that there was a better life than worrying every day about your physical safety.

There was a better life than being a vegetarian

and not by choice. That there was a better life than having only a pot-bellied stove in one room in a household.

There was a better life other than outdoor plumbing.

It was a better life than having a job of going a block away to get water and bring it back.

And it was a better life than taking a bath

in the third use of the water that had been acquired.

I knew that there had to be a better life

and that clearly had to be a better life than having no shoes.

Willie Brown would achieve that better life in California, where he moved when he was 17.

He had an effervescent personality, a drive, and a knack for politics that was

second to none. He went on to become one of the most powerful politicians in California history

and one of the most influential black elected

officials in the country. He was a member of the California Assembly for 30 years,

speaker for 15 of them. Among his many accomplishments there was the legalization

of homosexuality in 1975 which won him the lasting devotion of San Francisco's gay community. In 1996 he became the mayor of San Francisco,

the city's first black mayor. He was pro-development and pro-social justice. He brought every

underrepresented sector of society into his administration, women, gays,

Asians, Latinos, blacks. He changed the face of San Francisco in other ways to during his two terms.

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