DeNeen L. Brown

Washington, D.C.

Local enterprise reporter

DeNeen L. Brown is an award-winning staff writer at The Washington Post. Brown has covered night police, education, courts, politics and culture. She has written about the black middle class, poverty, the homeless, arts and gentrification. As a foreign correspondent, Brown traveled throughout the Arctic to write about climate change and indigenous populations. In 2006, Brown won first place in narrative features in the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors’ Excellence in Feature Writing Contest. She won the 1999 award for non-deadline writing by the American Society of Newspaper
Latest from DeNeen L. Brown

Racial justice coalition demands that Biden order study of reparations

A coalition of dozens of human rights organizations and racial justice advocates delivered a letter to the White House Wednesday, demanding that President Biden issue an executive order to create a commission to study reparations for slavery in the United States.

May 5, 2022

Judge allows lawsuit by Tulsa Race Massacre survivors to proceed

A judge in Oklahoma ruled that a reparations lawsuit filed by survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre may move forward.

May 3, 2022

James Madison’s plantation vowed to share power with Black descendants. Then things blew up.

It was hailed as a model for granting representation to descendants of enslaved people.

April 22, 2022

Montpelier staffers say they were fired for backing descendants group

Senior staffers at James Madison's Montpelier say they were fired from the historic estate after speaking up for descendants of the enslaved.

April 18, 2022

Mary McLeod Bethune, civil rights pioneer, advised presidents on ‘the problems of my people’

A statue of Mary McLeod Bethune, a Black woman who advised five presidents, will soon be installed in National Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol.

March 5, 2022

Black History Month founder showed how schools should teach about race

Carter G. Woodson's classic "The Mis-Education of the Negro" still resonates in today's charged political debates over critical race theory.

February 1, 2022

Descendants of Marcus Garvey press Biden for posthumous pardon

Descendants of the Black nationalist leader are pressing President Biden to issue a posthumous presidential pardon.

December 4, 2021

She survived the Tulsa Race Massacre. Now, at 107, she’s become a queen mother.

Viola Fletcher and her 100-year-old brother flew in August from Oklahoma to Ghana, where they were honored by the West African nation for their resilience and fearlessness.

September 4, 2021

An abolitionist’s hope meets a president’s hypocrisy

Frederick Douglass pushed for progress for Black people, but Andrew Johnson erased it.

September 3, 2021

Tulsa Race Massacre survivors ask Justice Department to intervene in the search for mass graves

The request for the Justice Department to get involved comes weeks after Tulsa officials reburied remains that were exhumed from a mass grave discovered in a city-owned cemetery.

August 18, 2021