BROWNE, ROBERT S.

Robert Span Browne (1924-) has been an economist, black activist, foreign aid officer, professor, economic consultant, founder of three black self-help organizations, and writer and speaker in his areas of expertise.

Browne began his career teaching at New Orleans' Dillard University in 1947 and served as the Industrial Field Secretary for the Chicago Urban League, 1950-1952. He held positions with the Agency for International Development in Cambodia (1955-1958) and in Vietnam (1958-1961). As a result of his experiences in Southeast Asia, he became a deeply involved activist against American involvement in Vietnam, and ran for the United States Senate from New Jersey as an independent candidate in 1966 on an anti-Vietnam platform.

In the late 1960's and early 1970's Browne immersed himself in working for black economic change. He assisted in organizing the 1967 National Conference on Black Power in New Jersey which called for the partitioning of the United States into two sovereign entities, one white, one black. In 1969 Browne delivered the keynote address at the National Black Economic Development Conference which addressed the liberation of African Americans through economic development as a means of gaining control of their destiny. He also participated in the 1972 National Black Political Convention which put forward a national agenda which sought an independent black politics striving toward change in the realms of economics, human development, international policy, communications, rural development, politics and other major issues.

In order to realize some of the goals involving black economic empowerment, Browne founded three organizations: Black Economic Research Center (1969), as a center of applied research that garnered the services of black economists, utilizing their research for many black economic development undertakings (BERC also published a quarterly journal, "The Review of Black Political Economy"); the Twenty-First Century Foundation in 1971, a small black-controlled foundation established to fund black organizations in the fields of education and economic development; and the Emergency Land Fund (organized in 1971) which was designed to assist African Americans retain their steadily declining land holdings in the South and to utilize them effectively.

Among several teaching posts, Browne taught economics at Fairleigh Dickinson University (1964-1972) and also served as Senior Research Fellow of African Studies at Howard University (1982-1985). He was Staff Director of the Subcommittee on International Development, Finance, Trade and Monetary Policy of the House Banking Committee, where he worked on issues related to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and Third World debt, among others (1986-1991). Browne retired in 1993 and since that time has been an economic consultant for Washington, D.C. based organizations, several dealing with Africa.

From the guide to the Robert Span Browne papers, 1957-1995, (The New York Public Library. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division.)