Willie Brown (politician)
41st Mayor of San Francisco
Willie Lewis Brown Jr. (born March 20, 1934) is an American politician and attorney. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as mayor of San Francisco from 1996 to 2004, the first African American to hold the office.
Born in Mineola, Texas, where he graduated from high school, Brown moved to San Francisco in 1951. He graduated from San Francisco State University in 1955 and earned a J.D. from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in 1958, after which he began his career as an attorney and was involved in the civil rights movement. He was elected to the California Assembly in 1964, gaining popularity in San Francisco as one of the country's most powerful state legislators. As a legislator, Brown earned a reputation as a supporter of civil rights of gays and lesbians, and was able to manage colleagues and maintain party discipline. He served as the speaker of the California State Assembly from 1980 to 1995. His long tenure and powerful position was a focal point of the California ballot proposition limiting the terms of state legislators that passed in 1990. During the last of his three allowed post-initiative terms, Brown maintained control of the Assembly despite a slim Republican majority.
The public source identifies “Willie Brown (politician)” as 41st Mayor of San Francisco. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Willie, Brown and politician.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5365075. VIAF identifies the subject as 1349876. The Library of Congress control number is n82034468. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1934, 1996, 2004 and 1951.
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This entry incorporates text from “Willie Brown (politician)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.