By Georgiana Vines
Jacquelyn Brown’s childhood was spent living in racial prejudice in Alabama. She brought to Knoxville a dedication to racial justice when she came to work for the Knoxville News Sentinel in 1981.
She died much too young of pancreatic cancer at age 52 in 2004. I worked with Jackie, as she was known at the News Sentinel. We performed together in the Front Page Follies, a spoof of newsmakers that raised money for journalism scholarships put on by the East Tennessee Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
She could sing. I couldn’t. She sang all genres of music but soared with gospel. That would be expected of a daughter of an African-American Baptist minister; Richard Brown, Sr. “She was very energetic,” remembered her brother, Richard S. Brown Jr., pastor of Payne Avenue Missionary Baptist Church, 2714 Martin Luther King Blvd.
“She had an uncanny way of putting things. Edye Ellis (a former WBIR-TV anchor) called her a wordsmith. She was not afraid of a challenge. She would meet an obstacle head-on rather than ducking it. I remember her being courageous, even in her final days.”
Jackie was diagnosed with cancer in 2002, underwent aggressive treatment and was told early in 2003 that she was cancer-free. Then she became ill later in 2003 and the doctors told her cancer had returned. At the time, she was on extended medical leave from the News Sentinel. She died at Morningview Villas, Blount Memorial Hospital’s transitional-care center in Maryville.
Her 85-year-old mother, Dorothy Brown, lives in Alcoa today. Jackie was her oldest child, born in 1952, which means she would be 67 if still living. Besides Richard Jr., Jackie had three sisters and another brother. Two of the siblings, Valencia Brown and Michael Brown, live with the mother today.
Jackie’s mother Dorothy Brown said Jackie was a kind person and as a child, very observant. In Birmingham, Ala., where the family lived when Jackie was a teenager, was a TV program, “Know Your News,” showcasing young people.
“Jackie was requested three times to come on the program. She was so knowledgeable. She knew things,” Dorothy Brown said.
The father, Richard S. Brown Sr., was pastor at Bethel Baptist Church in Alcoa when he died in 1991. Dorothy Brown sang and played the piano at his church and others. She said she still plays there once a month and plays two selections another week at her son’s church.
I remember Dorothy Brown playing the piano at Jackie’s funeral at Payne Avenue with all the family members singing.
Among her beats in Knoxville was education, an interest that led her to run for a term on the Alcoa School Board in the community where she lived. She was elected. Becoming the first African-American elected to the Blount Co. School Board.
Jackie, a graduate of Talladega College, was married to Myron McClary when she joined the paper. The couple had three sons, Bernard, Marcus, and Bryon. At one point in her career at the News Sentinel, she wrote a piece in which she told her three sons the story of Martin Luther King Jr. She wrote that she didn’t know King personally but she was “close enough to hear the bombs of hatred exploding in the night” when the civil rights leader visited Alabama. This is from a story on her death in the News Sentinel on Jan. 23, 2004, written by this columnist.
She also described two water fountains in public places – one for “whites” and the other for “coloreds.” She said she tried to wait until she got home to drink water.
She left the News Sentinel briefly to be director of communications for the Greater Knoxville Chamber of Commerce. When she returned, she helped supervise a summer program for minority high school students that the paper had under then-Editor Harry Moskos. In 1996, she was named public service director and two years later she became community services manager in the newspaper’s marketing department. There she continued to organize the Empty Stocking Fund, Spelling Bee and Academic Achievers programs.
While public service director, she wrote a column that appeared in the newspaper’s community sections, which gave her a chance to share her thoughts. Often the topic was on cultivating and nurturing cultural diversity.
She was working in the marketing department when she died. But some of us felt she was always a reporter at heart and would have liked to be telling her stories again from the newsroom.
If she wasn’t singing.
“She loved to sing,” said her brother, Richard. “She loved to play the piano. She would do that at the church when we needed someone to fill in. She used to play for churches in Birmingham.”
Richard Brown also said he believes his sister would find some irony in Justice Knox, a program that is organizing people in congregations and organizations to hold community leaders accountable to justice and fairness.
“A lot of issues we struggled with have come around again,” he said. “They are in a little different format. We’re still fighting on voting rights. There is an increase-like resurgence in white supremacy. (Some people) feel more embolden (about their biases) than in the past where feelings were sort of kept under cover. Now it doesn’t seem as frowned upon, something is saying it’s ok (to act discriminatory), from the top of government. The struggles never fully went away and serve as a reminder for us that we still have to fight.”
Georgiana Vines is retired News Sentinel associate editor.