North Carolina’s Largest City Elects First Ex-Prisoner to Council
On December 3, 2023, Tiawana Brown became the first ex-prisoner sworn in to serve on the city council of Charlotte, North Carolina. In September 2023, the self-described “survivor of incarceration” won the Democratic primary in the city’s District 3, her life-long home, before going on to win the seat in the November 2023 general election.
Brown, 52, said her win sent a message to other formerly incarcerated people that “what you did is in your past. You can move forward, overcome the adversity and be somebody successful, whatever your success is.”
She was still in her 20s and pregnant with her second child when she was sentenced to a federal prison in West Virginia for fraud. After release, she returned to the city’s subsidized Southside Homes and founded Beauty After Bars, a nonprofit dedicated to helping women transition from incarceration back into society. That has also helped her forge a “close” professional relationship with Mecklenburg County Sheriff Gary McFadden, she said.
Charlotte is the largest city in the Tarheel state and the 15th-largest in the U.S., with an estimated population over 879,000 that is also the center of a metropolitan area now home to almost 3.4 million people.
Sources: Charlotte Observer, Raleigh News & Observer, WFAE,
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