Flonzie Brown Wright

Early life and education Flonzie Brown was born on August 12, 1942, in Farmhaven, Madison County, Mississippi, into an African American family, and was raised in Canton, Mississippi. Her maternal side of the family had grown-up educated and multi-cultural; and her paternal side of the family had been enslaved.

Brown-Wright attended Holy Child Jesus School, where she met her classmate Thea Bowman; and she attended Canton public schools. Brown-Wright attended Tougaloo College.

She married a childhood friend and they moved to California, and had three children, but by 1962 she divorced.

After the murder of Medgar Evers in 1963, she became committed to work in the civil rights movement initially focused on voting rights.

During the civil rights movement in the 1960s, she helped register thousands of voters in the state of Mississippi. In 1968, she was elected as the Election Commissioner in Canton, where she was tasked with monitoring elections, training poll workers, supervising registrars, and holding educational workshops for voters. She sued the Elections Board for discrimination against candidates and poll workers. and served as president of the non-profit organization Women for Progress in Mississippi.

She published a memoir, Looking Back to Move Ahead: An Experience of History and Hope (1st ed. 1996). Her life story was included in the documentary film, Standing on My Sisters' Shoulders (1997) by Laura J. Lipson.

In 2018, she was honored by the United States House of Representatives.

Publications