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 Editors. Brown is an associate professor in the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. Honors & Awards:

In 1999, Brown was named the winner of the annual prize for non-deadline reporting awarded by the American Society of Newspaper Editors. She received the award for five narratives, including a profile of a school superintendent and a narrative called “The Accused,” about two young boys wrongly accused of murder in Chicago. That narrative also won the 1999 Salute to Excellence First Place feature award from the National Association of Black Journalists. She has won the Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association awards for education reporting, public service and team series. She received a 2005 NABJ Salute to Excellence third-place award for “Tight Corner,” a feature using dialogue to capture the life in a D.C. corner store. In 2006, Brown’s story entitled “Mr. Wonderful” won first place and the Best-in-the-Show Award for daily writing from the Virginia Press Association. The story also won first place in the 2006 Excellence-In-Feature-Writing Contest for Narrative Features from the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors. In 2007, Brown won first place in the NABJ magazine investigative category for a story in The Post magazine called "To Catch a Killer" unraveling a woman’s quest to find her sons’ killers. Brown was a Washington Post Media Fellow at Duke University.

Latest from DeNeen L. Brown

Retropolis

Scientists find a mass grave in Tulsa that might be from 1921 race massacre

Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum called the discovery a significant moment in Tulsa history, but more work must be done to determine whether the remains are connected to the century-old massacre

Oct 21, 2020

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Scientists find human remains that might be from Tulsa’s 1921 race massacre

A state archaeologist said the bones discovered Tuesday in Oaklawn Cemetery will be examined for trauma.

Oct 20, 2020

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Tulsa begins search for ‘Original 18’ Black people killed in 1921 race massacre

Exactly where they are buried remains a century-old mystery. On Monday, the city will begin digging for a second time in Oaklawn Cemetery.

Oct 19, 2020

Retropolis

The history of ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing,’ the Black anthem being played at NFL games

The NFL's decision to play the Black national anthem at its season-opening games could expose millions of Americans to a song written a century ago and beloved by African Americans.

Sep 10, 2020

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Tulsa Race Massacre survivors file lawsuit, demanding ‘repair’ for 1921 attack

The lawsuit claims that the city, the county, the Oklahoma National Guard and other officials not only failed to defend Black people from a White mob but aided in the killing and destruction.

Sep 2, 2020

Retropolis

Racism denied Auburn’s first Black student a master’s degree. Then, at 86, he returned.

Harold Franklin, who integrated Auburn University in 1964, was blocked from earning his master's degree in history. More than a half-century later, he finally got the chance to defend his thesis.

Aug 30, 2020

Retropolis

Ida B. Wells gets her due as a Black suffragist who rejected movement’s racism

A mosaic of her portrait, on display at Washington’s Union Station, is composed of thousands of smaller photos of women who fought for the right to vote and commemorates the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment’s ratification.

Aug 25, 2020

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Kamala Harris’s dad was from Jamaica, where a fierce woman warrior once fought slavery

Nanny of the Maroons, a national hero in Jamaica, helped defeat the British and bring an end to the slave trade in the British Empire.

Aug 19, 2020

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Shirley Chisholm blazed the way for Kamala Harris to be Biden’s VP pick

Chisholm was the first Black woman elected to U.S. Congress, and in 1972, she became the first Black woman to run for president.

Aug 11, 2020

Retropolis

Tulsa protesters use race massacre 'tombstones’ to defend a Black Lives Matter mural

Tulsa officials temporarily suspended removal of the mural after protesters placed symbolic tombstones bearing the names of Black people shot by police or killed in the city’s infamous 1921 race massacre.

Aug 3, 2020