Brenda Burton Webb

In Pursuit of Beauty, Justice and Joy

To get to this moment where we gather to celebrate and give thanks for the life of Brenda Janet Burton Webb. we must look back nearly a century to a crucial decision made by her mother Lucille Leslie, Lucille was a girl on her family's sprawling farm in Jackson County, Florida along the Chattahoochee River. Though hers was a loving family. Lucille knew early on that she didn't want to spend her life there with her seven sisters and one brother harvesting the fields after school. So, as Leslie family lore goes, after she completed high school at Jackson County Training School, Lucille got her mother to write a letter to cousins Clennon and Margaret King in Albany, Georgia, asking them to look out for Lucille as she attended Albany State Normal College (Albany State University). The Kings had become a prominent civil rights family and were business owners in the city. That's where Lucille wanted to be. The Kings said yes and made good on their word to look out for Lucille as they did their own seven sons. In this wav Lucille became an Albanian, and in 1943 married an Albanian, Cecil Burton. And on August 13, 1944, their daughter Brenda was born.

The little girl would have the life her mother had worked for, not of fertile fields and rolling countryside, but of city lights, arts and activism. These three elements, along with a deep love and commitment to family,
would remain constants in Brenda's life until the end.

The three "Rs," reading, writing and arithmetic, were the foundation of her education at Madison Elementary School, where at recess she played the old children's game "Pop the Whip" with her classmates, always near the front of the line as they ran down a hill, laughing, screaming and holding hands. Though a solid student, where Brenda really excelled was the arts. Whether playing the upright Winter Company piano in her mother's living room on Lincoln Avenue, drawing pictures or dancing with her ballet troupe at recitals, Brenda was happiest when she was creating and surrounded by beauty.

This held true during her high school years at the prestigious Boylan-Haven Mather Academy boarding school in Camden, South Carolina, and in her first year at Morgan State College (University) in Baltimore, Maryland where she declared an art major. Yet, her rearing in Albany with the Kings and seeing her own mother open her home to luminaries of the Civil Rights Movement, such as Constance Baker Motley, Rev. Ralph D. Abernathy and Martin Luther King, Jr., for their planning meetings, impacted Brenda. She joined the nascent student protest movement at Morgan State, which staged multiple sit-ins to desegregate businesses near campus. And she continued her support of desegregation after transferring to Morris Brown College in Atlanta where she received a bachelor's degree in business administration. Yet, even though she changed her major to a discipline that would guarantee her a job after graduation, Brenda did not give up her dream of being on stage. She joined the campus theater troupe. That impulse to push back and stand up for human dignity in the face of discrimination would become her life's professional work. But music, theater, dance and visual arts were her sustenance.

In summers, Brenda would be sent back to the Florida farm so she could get to know her Leslie side of the family. On Christmas visits back to Albany, she would wrap shoppers' gifts in the back room of the Swank Shop owned by the Kings. Among the gift wrappers was Carolyn Webb, one of ten children in the Webb family. A romance eventually blossomed between Brenda and Carolyn's oldest brother, Melvin. On June 8, 1968, the two married in a grand ceremony that prompted a front-page article in the Southwest Georgian, the city's Black newspaper. Under the headline "Brenda Janet Burton Speaks Vows with Mr. Melvin Richard Webb," the article described every detail of the ceremony from the candlelit church awash with greenery and daisies, the yellow silk linen bridesmaids' gowns and the 14-carat gold bracelets given as gifts to each bridesmaid. Each line of the story attested to Brenda's artistic eye for elegance, balance and beauty.

For the next five decades, Brenda traveled the nation and world with her husband after he received his Ph.D. in science education from Ohio State University, where Brenda also worked and studied. New York City, Los Angeles, Papua New Guinea, Thailand, Egypt, Australia, Rwanda. Each year brought a new destination. The couple settled in Decatur, Georgia. Yet, even as she supported his career as a professor and dean at Clark College (Clark Atlanta University), Brenda made her own mark in the federal government at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in the downtown Atlanta office. She rose steadily from an investigator to a regional compliance supervisor, training investigators across the Southeast how to identify and root out discriminatory practices based on race, sex, age and ability. Growing up she had a front row seat to the protest era and now she could help enforce those hard-won rights.

The trips abroad were a respite from government work. Each adventure broadened her view of the world; and they expanded the couple's art collection. Slowly but surely the wall of their midcentury modern home filled With treasures: craved walking sticks from Africa; grass-cloth satchels woven in Papua New Guinea (which Brenda framed): and travel posters from across the globe. At home in Atlanta. Brenda was a stalwart arts patron: season holder to the Alliance Theatre during Kenny Leon's tenure, a Black Arts Festival regular, and a fixture at gallery exhibition openings and concerts at Chastain Park. Soon, it seemed every square inch of wall space was covered with either global treasures or works from Black American artists such as Varnette Honeywood and Romare Bearden.

Yet, there remained a yearning and a void. So, a few days after a lovely baby boy was born on November 14, 1990, in Detroit, Michigan, Brenda flew there to gather him in her arms and bring him home to Decatur. She and Melvin named the child Melvin Cecil Paul Webb.

Brenda was a joyful, devoted mother, doting on Mel Jr., as her mother had on her and exposing him to art and music from the start. She'd play for him on the same piano she'd learned on as a child, but which now stood in her own living room. She got him into Jack and Jill of America, Inc. She was an active PTA member of his elementary and secondary schools. And she nurtured his budding musical talents. And she did all this while caring for her own mother until she passed away in 2002. Brenda was often in the audience with her husband whether "Mel Jr.," was playing in the jazz orchestra of his alma mater Clark Atlanta University or at a nightclub in Little Five Points. Mel Jr., returned the adoration: when Brenda starred in the lead role in a play at Friendship Baptist Church about a woman who couldn't walk but was healed by faith, Mel Jr., was there applauding.

Motherhood, marriage, a 31-year career as a civil servant, being a Deaconess at Friendship Baptist, as well as membership in numerous organizations including her beloved Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., Jack and Jill, the NAACP, all of these sustained her. And she helped sustain them with her time, dues and contributions, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice.

As her own health began failing and her memory fading, on the good days, one thing would break through; she would find her way to the living room, sit down at her childhood piano and play. And when the words would not come, she'd lift her voice and hum along.

Brenda passed away at home on March 31, 2025, after a long illness. She was preceded in death by her mother Lucille, and her father Cecil. She is survived by her husband, Dr. Melvin Webb, Sr., son Melvin Webb, Jr., sisters-in-law: Frances Webb Davis (Donell), Gloria Webb Parkman (William, Sandra J. Webb, Carolyn Webb Reid (Prince), Paulette L. Webb; brother-in-law, Michael J. Webb (Jennifer); numerous nieces, nephews and cousins, devoted friends, and loved ones.

The family offers a special thanks to Cornelia "Connie" Hemingway, long-time partner of Mel Jr., and Brenda's devoted caretakers, Brenda Thompkins, Mattie Greene and especially Mary Weekley, her cherished attendant and fierce advocate,