Rosemary Brown

Rosemary Brown was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and moved to Canada in 1950 to study at McGill University, where she encountered open racism and sexism that shaped her lifelong commitment to social justice work. She trained as a social worker and later worked as a university counsellor in Vancouver.

Brown became active in the Vancouver Status of Women Council and helped establish the British Columbia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People in 1965, building a reputation as a determined advocate for women's and minority rights in her adopted province. In 1972, she ran for and won a seat in the British Columbia Legislative Assembly representing Vancouver-Burrard, becoming the first Black woman ever elected to a legislature in Canada, at either the provincial or federal level.

During her fourteen years as an MLA, Brown championed legislation to remove sexist and racist content from British Columbia's education curriculum and to combat discrimination based on gender and marital status. In 1975, she became the first woman of colour to contest the leadership of a federal Canadian political party, running for the leadership of the New Democratic Party with the slogan "Brown is Beautiful" and finishing a strong second. She later chaired the Ontario Human Rights Commission and continued working internationally on behalf of women's development until her death in 2003.