Ted Brown

Ted Brown (born 1 February 1950) is a British gay rights activist. He organised the United Kingdom's first Gay Pride Rally in 1972 as part of his work in the Gay Liberation Front and co-founded Black Lesbians and Gays Against Media Homophobia (BLAGAMH). He has been described by The Guardian as a "key figure in both British civil rights history and LGBT history".

Early life

Brown's parents were both Jamaican. His mother, Dorothy Walker, was a pharmacist while his father worked as a garage attendant. They separated before he was born; his father later gave Walker, who was pregnant with Brown, a cup of coffee laced with drugs and called for medical assistance, causing her to be detained and taken to Pilgrim State Hospital, a psychiatric hospital in Brentwood, New York. On 1 February 1950, Brown was born at the hospital. He had an older sister, Jewel. Upon her release, Brown moved with his mother to Harlem and he went to the Catholic Our Lady of Victory school. There, he could meet with Jewel due to his parents sharing custody of her. In Harlem he was inspired by various black sportspeople including the Harlem Globetrotters and musical artists Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Billy Eckstine, and Ella Fitzgerald. He was five years old when Emmett Till was lynched, and was influenced by television coverage of the murder. Brown's mother died aged 50 on 22 November 1965 after a concurrent heart and asthma attack which she suffered in front of him and his siblings, who were sent to different children's homes. He became suicidal, but was imbued by news of the 1969 Stonewall riots at age 19. He has since stated that to him, "the basic principle of the GLF was that one should come out to show people who we actually are."

In 2021, Brown's civil partner Noel Glynn was abused in Albany Lodge nursing home in Croydon, suffering from bruising across his body and a cigarette burn to the back of his hand. Staff taunted Glynn and did not recognise their relationship, referring to Brown as Glynn's "friend" or "father". The suspected staff members were suspended for two weeks, but Brown said they returned to the home “on another floor”. Glynn died before he was awarded £30,000 by Lambeth Council after Brown sued in 2021. A short film documenting Brown's grief for Glynn directed by Julia Alcamo, Ted & Noel, was released in 2023 and won the Iris Prize Co-op Audience Award. Channel 4 released it to the public in 2023 and is expected to stream it until October 2024.

More recently Brown has focused on the media environment around transgender people, describing it as identical to the treatment of gay people during his youth. and he spoke at the 2022 UK Black Pride in August. He appeared on the podcast Black and Gay, Back in the Day to speak about his life.