Born in segregation-era Birmingham, Ala., Wilma Brown moved to Toledo with her mother as a 14-year-old southern girl, arriving in the North with a sense of overwhelming disappointment.

"I was devastated when I first came here because I had my whole life planned out and I didn't know anyone here," Ms. Brown said.

The two left behind relatives and a life in Alabama when they boarded a bus bound for Toledo 60 years ago, but it was a move Ms. Brown now says she never regretted. She never has been back to Birmingham.

And after decades of Democratic politics in Toledo, Ms. Brown, 74, the first African-American woman elected Toledo City Council president, says growing up in Birmingham was "the interesting part" of her life.

Her mother and father separated when she was very young and she grew up in a house "full of women."

"It was me, my great-grandmother, grandmother, my aunt, and my mother all in the one house," she said.

Her memories of Christmas are the sharpest.

"It was the best time of the year because the Christmas tree would go up the first part of December and there would be fruit, nuts, and candy all around the tree and I would eat my way through December."

But Ms. Brown also recalls the racism that went along with segregation in the South before the civil rights movement.

"We knew when we got on the bus that there were three seats in the back, and they did have fountains for whites and for blacks," she said. "But I had a very nice school and good teachers who gave me incentives that I could go to college and be a dress designer."

She said a common misconception is that all schools in Southern black neighborhoods were bad.

"I had a lovely new school and it was well-stocked with books, and I had great teachers," Ms. Brown said. "The teachers at that time, you looked up to them because of the way they carried themselves, and they would invite you to their homes, and you emulated them."

Her early dreams included a career as a designer.

"We all had big desires in school back then," she said. "One person wanted to be a teacher, one wanted to be a doctor, and I wanted to be a designer, so I was going to go to Pratt School of Design in New York, but I didn't get there."

Ms. Brown's great-aunt was a seamstress and taught her how to sew early on - which is a skill she later used in Toledo to get her first job.

"Birmingham was much larger than Toledo and even though it was a segregated city, we had wonderful housing," she said. "We lived by the jail and that was the time when Bull Connors was the [public safety commissioner] and you could hear people screaming as you walked by because he used to beat prisoners."

When Ms. Brown and her mother, Ruby Brown, moved to Toledo in 1950, they first lived in a home along Dorr Street near City Park Avenue - where she said things were different than in segregated Birmingham.

She still looks back fondly on the city of her birth.

"Even though it was segregated, blacks had their own area in Birmingham …We had our own restaurants, our own churches, and that's what you did," she said.

She said the only time she felt overt discrimination was during summers in Georgia, where she stayed with relatives.

"I hated going to Georgia, but they would ship me down there for summers," Ms. Brown said. "I just went to visit, but I did pick cotton once - just a bowl of cotton."

After moving to Toledo, Ms. Brown attended Scott High School for two years.

"I remember it was integrated and it was about 50 percent white and 50 percent black, and there were a lot of Jewish students," she said. "I didn't have any problems."

Throughout high school, Ms. Brown and her mother struggled with money. Her mother remarried, but the marriage didn't last and her stepfather moved back to Birmingham. Ms. Brown and her mother stayed in Toledo to make a new life.

"I was worried that I was not going to be able to afford my white dress for graduation," she said.

After high school, she did alterations in a dress shop for 19 years and then opened her own modeling and designing business.

During a five-year stint at the Toledo Health Department, she taught an environmental health course on rodent control.

"I became known as the rat lady," Ms. Brown said. "I would go into a grocery store and the children would see me and tell their mommas, 'Oh, there is the rat lady,' and that was fine with me 'cause we were controlling rats."

After that, she started a 23-year career with the Maumee Valley Girls Scouts Council, something she says, along with her church, helped prepare her for politics.

"Suppose I had come here and my church had not taken me in or the Girl Scouts had not taken me in, because I didn't know anything about Girl Scouts," Ms. Brown said.

The longtime Democrat eventually retired as membership director for the Girls Scouts and started her career in Toledo politics.

She began as a volunteer for state Rep. Casey Jones (D., Toledo) because he was the "leading black politician in the area and just about everyone in Toledo volunteered for him."

The Democratic Party "twisted her arm" to run for the school board in 1984 and did so again 12 years later when she was asked to run for Toledo City Council because the party did not want to endorse then-incumbent June Boyd.

She acknowledges now that City Council faces difficult choices in order to fix the city's lopsided budget.

"I will try to get them to be cohesive and at least respect each other," Ms. Brown said. "There is no such thing as you have to love me, but work with me, and I think that will happen."

Ms. Brown is the first council president in several years to be elected by a unanimous vote.

"I don't look at it as being a black woman," she said. "I look at it as the first woman, period."

The 12-0 vote on Jan. 4 is significant because of the rancor that has dominated council the past two years.

"I think we had a lot of in-fighting," Ms. Brown said when asked what she had to correct immediately. "We had special points we wanted to make," she said. "And also with [former] Mayor Finkbeiner, we would turn on the TV or read an article and he was doing things we knew nothing about - and these were things we had to approve."

Ms. Brown said she has always been infatuated with Dorr Street because that's where she and her mother settled when they first came to Toledo.

When she arrived, it was "a thriving community," but it eventually wasted away, she said.

"I think we are about a third of a way there because the street has been repaved, the sidewalks and infrastructure is redone, there are new businesses going in from both ends, UT is helping me with the south side, and we have new brownstones," Ms. Brown said. "Dorr Street is my legacy."

During her time on council, Ms. Brown has been committed to the revitalization of the "Dorr Street Corridor." She created an awards program to acknowledge businesses that have made special efforts to improve their properties, has preserved certain areas as green space along the corridor, and spearheaded the organization of the Secor Gardens Task Force.

She lives on Searles Road near Secor and Dorr, within walking distance of the University of Toledo.

Her home is a modest two-story house on a quiet street. Comfortably furnished, but it's the life-sized cutout of Barack Obama in her living room that draws the most attention.

Ms. Brown has been married and divorced twice, and her son, Frederick, works in the city streets department; he lives nearby. Her mother, now deceased, also lived nearby. She says she stays in touch with her last ex-husband.

The Rev. John E. Roberts, pastor of Indiana Avenue Baptist Church, said Ms. Brown was selected to lead council at a crucial time for the city - in the midst of a $43.8 million deficit predicted for 2010 and after two years of political turmoil.

Ms. Brown is a longtime member of the church. Mr. Roberts, who held the Bible for her as she took her oath of office, has known her for many years.

"It's quite a bit of weight on her," he said. "They are going to have to come up with an agenda to solve these problems, and I think that's one of the reasons that council went toward her - because they really need unity on the council."

Before being elected to council, Ms. Brown spent a dozen years on the Toledo Board of Education.

Retired Toledo Public Schools Superintendent Crystal Ellis has high praise for Ms. Brown, who was also president of the school board.

"They don't come any better," Mr. Ellis said. "She was with what I call the board members committed to, and concerned for, the children. They didn't try to be the superintendent or administrators of the district. They set the policy."

Mr. Ellis, who lives just a short walk from Ms. Brown, said she is up for her new leadership role, which he agreed will sometimes involve political wrangling and deal-making.

"Underneath that, as we say, that cover, is a very, very strong, committed person and she's not one who waivers," he said. "She's consistent in her willingness and determination to do what's right and she also cooperates with people."

Ms. Brown has for years been chairman of council's public safety committee, which oversees police and fire operations.

Last year, she urged the Finkbeiner administration to settle concessionary contracts with the city's police and fire unions.

Councilman Michael Ashford, who was council president briefly, said Ms. Brown was the right choice in a difficult time.

"Wilma offers a different style that people feel very comfortable with, and the Democrats wanted to erase the in-house bickering over leadership," Mr. Ashford said. "We made a commitment that whoever got the majority of votes, everyone would support that person because we wanted to start 2010 on a civil note and show the community we are willing to work together."

Besides her work on council, Ms. Brown runs the "Debutante Cotillion," a group that tries to give high school girls a sense of social etiquette and offers college scholarship money. It is operated through The Toledo Club of the National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women's Clubs Inc. It presented the 45th annual Debutante Cotillion for high school seniors in May, 2009, at Stranahan Great Hall.

Ms. Brown also hosts a "community breakfast" fund-raiser event every year to benefit The Josh Project, a faith-based organization formulated to teach, educate, and empower youth by offering educational opportunities in the area of water safety.

Ms. Brown enjoys cooking, especially her special holiday cakes for Christmas gifts, but often eats at Ruby's Kitchen at 4933 Dorr, one of Toledo's few soul food eateries.

She has little spare time for herself. When she gets home, much time is spent with Precious, her cocker spaniel-Shih Tzu mixed-breed dog.

"It sounds silly, but I talk to her and sometimes I sit here and take a nap with her, but there is not spare time because there is my church and then my club work," Ms. Brown said.

"Church is where I get my inspiration.… It is like my family."

Contact Ignazio Messina at:

imessina@theblade.com

or 419-724-6171.

First Published January 25, 2010, 10:26 a.m.