Mfume Remembers Ron Brown, Trying to Keep Hopes High

Aired April 3, 1996

JUDY WOODRUFF, Anchor: Kweisi Mfume, former Congressman Kweisi Mfume from the state of Maryland, who is now head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP, joins us now from Los Angeles. Congressman, you got to know Ron Brown in the late 1980s. What are your main memories of this man?

KWEISI MFUME, Executive Director, NAACP: Well, first of all, I should say that most of us are still hoping against hope that things work out and that Ron and the others on that plane are found and are found alive. If that is not God's will, and if things appear to be as they are unfolding, our hearts go out to Alma, to Michael, to other members of the Brown family who we've known and worked with and loved for years.

I met Ron in 1980 doing Senator Kennedy's campaign. We were both very much involved in that. I got to know him through the 1980s, through the Jackson campaign, and even more so when he ran the Democratic National Committee, which evidenced itself - at least his work - in the election of President Clinton. I think one thing we have to say about Ron Brown is that he was a true patriot, one who was a good partisan but one who could also bring people together, and he had a knack for taking the corporate community and the activist community and showing them how they were both tied together and why their ability to work together would make so much of a difference for the ability of this nation to succeed.

WOODRUFF: Yes. So we're talking with Kweisi Mfume, president of the NAACP, and we want to say we're now able to get a better look at who these people are. It is the bulk of the Clinton cabinet. Attorney General Janet Reno, Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, HUD Secretary - Housing and Urban Development - Secretary Henry Cisneros, Donna Shalala, who is the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Secretary Riley of the Education Department, a collection of some of the leaders of the Clinton administration. We are told that some of these- some of the people you see standing here are top officials in the Commerce Department, presumably who worked right under Ron Brown. Secretary Babbitt of the Interior Department and several other familiar faces.

Mr. Mfume, what drove Ron Brown- what drives Ron Brown- and I appreciate your correcting me a moment ago. We have to be careful not to slip into the past tense because we don't know with any finality or certainty his fate. We do know the plane is down, we know it does not look good, but we want to be very careful not to presume anything until we have final confirmation. What is it that drives this man, whom you've known for a number of years?

MFUME: Ron is a true believer. He believes in people, he believes in the power of ideas, believes in the will, believes in God's plan for all of us despite our own differences, to find ourselves eventually. He believed in himself. He had the ability to walk into a room of people who were not believers, who perhaps had a different point of view altogether, and infect them with this tremendous amount of optimism for the future and his love for this country and his willingness to make things work. That's one of the things about Ron that most of us who have known him over the years have come to know, love, and appreciate.

WOODRUFF: What was it about politics and Ron Brown. This was something he was attracted to almost from the beginning. He, I guess, shortly after he graduated from law school, he got involved in politics.

MFUME: Well, he did. He not only got involved, he got involved and he won. I mean, even when he was involved with a campaign that wasn't successful, as we all were with the Kennedy campaign in 1980 or the Jackson campaign later in that decade. Ron had a way of winning anyway. He won the hearts and the minds of people who started believing again that their role was to make the system work, and that in spite of the impediments, they had really a role to play. That kind of belief that carried over into politics evidenced itself over and over again. He had a pure passion for it. He was clearly, to the best of his credit, was a true partisan but he was also a true patriot who believed that unless we, as a nation, found ourselves, perhaps we would lose ourselves in the political process.

WOODRUFF: Congressman- Mr. Mfume, we're going to pause here because President Clinton, first lady Hilary Rodham Clinton have come into the auditorium at the Commerce Department. Let's listen to this.

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