!*NC Activist Ervin Brisbon dies suddenly at age 46
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6-14-99 By TOM STEADMAN, Staff Writer
News & Record
Ervin Brisbon, the community activist whose fiery protests made him a
lightning rod on racial issues for more than two decades, died unexpectedly
Sunday morning after being stricken at his home. He was 46.
The cause of death has yet to be determined; Brisbon's body has been sent to
Chapel Hill for an autopsy.
Since the 1970s, Brisbon served as a strident voice for racial justice in
Greensboro, most recently during a countywide dispute over school
redistricting. But he waged many other fights.
Just last week, for example, Brisbon appeared before the Greensboro Human
Relations Commission as one of 15 people testifying about racial
discrimination in employment. A week earlier, Brisbon called a news
conference to announce that he and the N.C. Racial Justice Network would
file suit against the Guilford school board and the sheriff's department for
arresting him and 14 others during redistricting protests earlier this year.
For Brisbon, no fight was too small, or too big.
"It's hard to imagine how Ervin's voice will be replaced," said Greensboro
Mayor Carolyn Allen. "Ervin has always been ... involved in speaking for the
'little people,' the voiceless people. Ervin and I didn't always agree on
things, but that's sort of beside the point."
Local leaders said they were stunned by Brisbon's death. They cited the fact
that he had no obvious health problems.
"My observation of him was that he kept himself pretty healthy, physically,"
said state Rep. Alma Adams, who had worked with Brisbon in campaigns and on
youth-related projects.
Brisbon was pronounced dead at 7:48 a.m. at Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital,
said Cone spokeswoman Susan Gerson. He was transported to Cone by paramedics
who had been summoned to his south Greensboro apartment. When they arrived
at the hospital, Gerson said, paramedics were performing CPR on Brisbon.
The Brisbon family stayed in their apartment Sunday, receiving only
relatives and intimate friends. Members of the Racial Justice Network, a
group that serves as a community watchdog on racial issues, issued no
statement on Sunday.
"We don't have any comment -- any of us," said Terry Austin, a network
member.
But across Greensboro, the word of his death evoked no shortage of response.
Adams praised Brisbon for his focus on children and education.
"Every community needs an Ervin Brisbon," Adams said. "He worked hard and
tirelessly for the children. He died doing that, and I appreciate what he
did. We are going to truly miss him."
Dudley High School, where Brisbon once matriculated and where his daughter,
Ebone, goes to school, interrupted its commencement ceremony Sunday to pay
tribute to Brisbon.
Johnny Hodge, a Guilford school board member who has caught his share of
criticism from Brisbon over the redistricting dispute, was in the Dudley
audience on Sunday.
"Ervin was the conscience of many people in Guilford County," Hodge said. He
and Brisbon didn't agree all the time, Hodge said, but he still had
tremendous respect for the way Brisbon operated.
"He definitely brought some issues to light that probably would not have
been addressed as thoroughly had he not insisted on them being addressed,"
Hodge said.
Calvin Boykin, another school board member who has felt Brisbon's public
barbs, expressed similar views.
"He was one of the few who was willing to take the lead," Boykin said.
"Hopefully, we will have others who will have that same conviction and a
willingness to step forward and battle issues of wrong when they see them."
The Rev. William Wright, chairman of the Pulpit Forum, an organization of
local, historically black churches, announced the news during services at
New Zion Missionary Baptist Church Sunday.
"The whole congregation was in shock," Wright said. "I stated that we had
had a tremendous loss of a community leader and friend. We are really going
to miss him."
Brisbon was born in Southern Pines in 1953, the second of Luvenia Brisbon's
six children. His father was Hoover Benymon, a man Brisbon did not meet
until 1997.
Luvenia Brisbon moved with her family to Greensboro when Ervin was 3. In a
lengthy News & Record interview earlier this year, Brisbon credited his
mother with instilling in her children a strong sense of self-esteem along
with what he termed a healthy suspicion of white people.
"'Don't let anyone disrespect you,' she'd say," recalled Brisbon. "Don't
ever let anyone walk over you.' I never have."
While he was quick to loudly denounce local politicians of all races any
time he thought they were short-changing minorities, Brisbon also talked
fondly of a youth spent on Washington Street in the heart of Greensboro's
black community during the '50s and early '60s. Before Urban Renewal wiped
it away in the mid-1960s, Washington Street was a self-sustaining
neighborhood of bakers, grocers, restaurants, beauty shops and funeral
parlors, he recalled.
"It was a wonderful place, a fun place," Brisbon said. "I never saw any
inferior people. I saw people who were successful and proud and having fun."
Brisbon attended Jones Elementary, J.C. Price Junior High and Dudley and
Page high schools. He was at Dudley when a riot broke out at the high school
in 1969 over school authorities' refusal to seat black honor student Claude
Barnes as president of the student council. Dudley students walked out in
protest, violence ensued and young Brisbon was among those arrested,
spending two days in jail.
Later Brisbon attended Page, but dropped out and joined the Army. There, his
opposition to the Vietnam War got him into trouble. He was court-martialed
for disobeying orders and received a bad-conduct discharge. Then he returned
to Greensboro, married Sharon Akins, his high school sweetheart, in 1976,
and plunged into community activism. He also attended N.C. A&T State
University.
With Frank Cuthbertson, a member of the Greensboro Housing Authority,
Brisbon founded the Dreambuilders, a group that established tutorial,
recreational and crime prevention programs throughout the city's public
housing areas. The focus was on children.
"They knew he cared for them, and they knew he expected nothing in return,"
Cuthbertson said in an interview earlier this year.
Brisbon was cited by the Greensboro Jaycees and the Chamber of Commerce for
his work with Dreambuilders. But by the mid-80s, he had switched his efforts
to organizing local public-housing tenants and took on a more adversarial
role with the city's establishment.
In recent years, he drew headlines and stirred more controversy when he
appeared before the City Council and other public forums to demand justice
for Daryl Howerton, a mentally disturbed black man carrying a knife who was
shot by police officers in 1994. Brisbon said racism played a part in the
shooting.
Last year, Brisbon called for a shopper boycott of Four Seasons Town Centre
because he said young black males were being unduly harassed by mall
security officers. He also called for a boycott of the annual Martin Luther
King Jr. Memorial Breakfast, because it was held at the Koury Convention
Center, owners of the mall.
Most recently, Brisbon's attention had been on the controversial
attendance-zone plan just adopted by the Guilford County Board of Education.
He, along with fellow members of the N.C. Racial Justice Network, attended
school board meetings and redistricting work sessions, where they loudly
critized a plan they said pays short shrift to Guilford's black children.
In February, Brisbon and 14 others were arrested for disrupting school board
redistricting sessions. Brisbon spent eight days in jail, but was
unrepentant. He said he planned to keep up the fight.
"Black children are a beautiful reflection of the Creator," Brisbon said
earlier this year. "They are the most beautiful the world has ever known.
They must have a support system. They must survive."
Brisbon is survived by his wife, Sharon; sons Ervin Brisbon II and Marieno
Brisbon; and a daughter, Ebone.
Funeral arrangements are incomplete at Woodard Funeral Home.
Staff writers Tina Adams and Michael Grossman contributed to this story.