W.W. Browne

Portrait Courtesy of Meredith Carrington and Barry O'Keefe

W.W. BROWNE ROAD
Chamberlayne Avenue and Jackson Street 

William Washington Ben Browne was born enslaved on October 20, 1849 in Habersham County, Georgia to Joseph and Mariah Browne. He escaped slavery during the Civil War and served in the Union Army. He attended school in Wisconsin before relocating to Alabama to teach, which is where he met his wife, Mary A. Graham, in 1873. He emerged as a national temperance advocate and opponent of the Ku Klux Klan. After being denied to the Independent Order of Good Templars, he chartered the Grand United Order of True Reformers. In 1876, he was asked to lead a new branch of the temperance organization, which led to his relocation to Richmond, Virginia in 1880. Under his leadership, the organization shifted from a temperance society to an insurance company, which helped to support other enterprises, such as a newspaper called “The Reformer” and a bank called the Savings Bank of the Grand Fountain United Order of the True Reformers, which was the nation’s first Black-owned and operated bank. He along with Booker T. Washington were selected as representatives during the Cotton States and International Exposition in 1895. He departed on December 21, 1897 and was buried in Barton Heights Cemeteries, formerly known as Sycamore Cemetery, but was later reinterred at Woodland Cemetery.