During his twenty-year career, cut short due to a heart ailment, Brown photographed Dizzy Gillespie, jazz trombonist Jimmy Cleveland, the Hampton Sisters, the Milt Buckner Trio, and The Mills Brothers, among others.
He also photographed local churches, businesses, and street scenes, as well as notable individuals in Indianapolis's African-American community and nationally known boxers Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson.
Brown was a member of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity, a thirty-second degree Prince Hall Mason, and also served as an assistant pastor at Indianapolis’s Martindale Avenue Church of Christ.
[1][2] Emmett Sr. was an Indianapolis, Indiana, dentist who later became senior pastor at the city's Martindale Avenue Church of Christ.
[2][5] In mid-1950s Brown and his family relocated to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he opened a photography studio and became an editor at Sepia magazine, a photo-journal publication that featured articles on African-American politics, music, and lifestyles.
[5] Brown continued to work as a professional photographer for more than twenty years, mostly in Indianapolis, Indiana, and briefly in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Musical artists who appear in Brown's photographs include Dizzy Gillespie; jazz trombonist Jimmy Cleveland, who played with Lionel Hampton and recorded with Gillespie; the Hampton Sisters; the Willis Dyer Band, with Dyer playing a Hammond organ; drummer Les Fisher, who later played with Count Basie; Buddy Parker and his tenor saxophone; the Milt Buckner Trio, with Buckner on the piano and Hammond organ; and The Mills Brothers, among others.
[2][7] Brown also photographed notable individuals in Indianapolis's African-American community, including Judge Mercer Moore; Francis D. Hummons, a well-known local physician; and evangelist T. R. Murff, as well as nationally known boxers Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson.