Warren Brown: Motoring journalist who credited the US car industry with creating a black middle class

‘My father was the first black man to cover business in the United States for a major newspaper,’ Brown’s daughter said of the man who turned covering a news beat into an award-winning mission

Brown was ever mindful that he was writing about one of the most important sectors of the US economy and was unafraid to touch on related issues of race and social class (The Washington Post)

Cars were always more than a means of getting from A to B for automotive industry journalist Warren Brown. Brown, who has died aged 70, grew up under segregation in New Orleans. He said: “I had to sit at the back of the bus ... and that always bothered me. It always bothered my father, you know, boarding the bus and having to sit behind a sign saying ‘No Colored Beyond This Point’ … Cars have always meant more to me than the sum of their parts. They were a way to escape ... They were also a way for me to see my parents in charge of something rather than sitting behind a sign.”

Warren Aloysius Brown was born in New Orleans in the late Forties. He was one of seven children. Brown’s father served as an army medic in the war who had hoped to train as a doctor on his return to the States. Frustrated in his ambition by institutionalised racial prejudice, Brown Snr became a chemistry and biology teacher instead.

Brown himself was educated at a Catholic school. At the time, New Orleans public schools were being integrated against the will of the local governor, Jimmie Davis, who retaliated by stopping black teachers’ pay. Brown, whose father was affected by the pay stoppage, began a letter-writing campaign. He said: “I took it upon myself to write Governor Davis, you know a nasty letter, calling him a racist and a bunch of other things… The mistake I made was, I mailed the letter without letting my father read it first. And he said, “Are you trying to get us killed… Don’t you understand how the real world operates?” But he was also proud.”

Brown graduated with a degree in English and secondary education from Xavier University in New Orleans. He went on to study for a Masters in journalism at Columbia. He began his career as a journalist at The Philadelphia Inquirer before joining The Washington Post as a reporter in 1978. Following the advice of a colleague that he should find a niche, Brown began covering the automotive industry. He said of the decision, “What began as a news beat in 1982 became and remains a mission. In the process, I have morphed from journalist into servant, which is the proper mindset for covering an industry on which so many people depend.”

When writing about cars, Brown was always careful to marry the enthusiast’s passion for design and speed with the practical and financial concerns of the average American. He was also ever mindful that he was writing about one of the most important sectors of the US economy and was unafraid to touch on related issues of race and social class.

In 2008, Brown was vocal in his backing of the US government bailout of Detroit’s motor industry, when many other commentators were unsupportive of the move. Brown wrote, “There is a feeling in this country – apparent in the often condescending, dismissive way Detroit’s automobile companies have been treated on Capitol Hill – that people who work with their hands and the companies that employ them are inferior to those who work with their minds and plow profit from information. How else to explain the clearly disparate treatment given to companies such as Citigroup and General Motors?”

Brown said: “I’m willing to give GM and Ford a break, because they were the companies that gave my people a break.” He added, “We would not have a black middle class had we not had General Motors, Ford and Chrysler.”

Brown’s weekly review “On Wheels” continued until his retirement from the Post in 2009. However he continued to write for the paper with a column called “Cars”. He also wrote for Decisive Magazine and African Americans on Wheels and contributed to NPR and CNN.

His personal life also inspired his writing. Brown suffered from kidney disease and received two transplants. The first, in 1998, was from his wife, Mary Anne. When that transplant failed, Brown’s Washington Post colleague Martha McNeil Hamilton stepped in to offer him a second.

Brown and Hamilton wrote about their experiences surrounding the surgery for the Post. They later published the book Black & White & Red All Over: The Story of a Friendship. The friends had more than a blood type in common. Like Brown, white working class Hamilton, who grew up in segregated Houston, had been hired to the Post under the “affirmative action” policy. Critics hailed their memoir as “a success story about integration”.

Alas, the second transplant also failed and Brown had to return to dialysis. But he continued to work and in 2012, he was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 16th Annual Urban Wheel awards. He wrote his final column for the Post in December 2017. His daughter Binta tweeted on the occasion, “My father was the first black man to cover business in the United States for a major newspaper. How I admire and look up to him, his contributions to the newspaper industry and to automotive journalism.”

In an interview to promote the book he wrote with Hamilton, Brown explained how his experience of kidney disease had affected his outlook on life. “I no longer worry about dying as much ... If there’s one thing you learn when you go through something like this it’s that you’re going to die, you know, regardless of whether not not the operation is successful ... And so then the question, of course, becomes, you know, how well do you live?”

He is survived by his wife of 48 years, Mary Anne, a son and two daughters.

Warren Brown, journalist, born 17 January 1948, died 26 July 2018