Like all long-standing African American communities in Los Angeles County and the United States, Inglewood has experienced its share of growing pains over the last few decades.
Throughout all the trials and tribulations the city has experienced, an uplifting constant for the city was Willie Brown (unrelated to the Bay Area politician). He used his platform as publisher of the community based newspaper Inglewood Today to spotlight the positive attributes of a town marginalized by the sensationalism of the news industry as a whole. Brown passed away on June 25 at the age of 81. He had been admitted to Cedar Sinai Hospital for emergency care, and expired from a combination of blood clots and a brain aneurysm.
Willie Charles Brown was born Feb. 17, 1944 in New Orleans, LA. and grew up in the infamous Desire neighborhood of the upper Ninth Ward. A football player of considerable talent who graced the roster of that city’s G. W. Carver High School, his athletic career was curtailed by the responsibilities of fatherhood, and he ventured west to seek his fortune.
His new location afforded him success in advertising sales, and in gratitude he developed an enduring loyalty to the city and community that nurtured his prosperity in the following years.
As the millennium progressed, the civil uprising of 1992 shook the foundations of Inglewood and the Los Angeles metropolitan area. This in turn prompted Brown to fill a void by providing responsible media representation for a populace unfairly maligned by news organizations as a whole. With this in mind he established Inglewood Today in 1993.
His efforts were a significant factor in the revitalization of the city, attracting entertainment and sports investments to its existing infrastructure with the addition of the Intuit Dome and the SoFi Stadium. In subsequent decades this has resulted in substantial economic growth through the attraction of new development projects, and rising property values overall.
Among those he befriended in these endeavors was an up and coming politician seeking a school board position. Now a city councilwoman, Gloria Gray recalls they bonded over a shared love of the community. In appreciation of Willie Brown’s efforts in civic improvement, she prompted the Inglewood city council meeting to be adjourned in his honor this week.
He was preceded in death by his wife of 45 years, the former Perdita “Di Di” Kennedy who passed from the COVID-19 virus in 2021, and is survived by two children.
A celebration of Willie Brown’s life will be held on July 18 from 4 to 9 PM at the CenterPointe Club, 6200 Playa Vista Drive in Playa Vista. Funeral services will be held at the Golden West Galleria Chapel, 720 E. Florence Ave. Inglewood, California 90301 on July 19 at 10:00 AM.