[1] Brown held minor offices such as Iberville Parish delegate (alongside Pierre G. Deslonde) to the Louisiana Constitutional Convention of 1867–1868, election registrar for Iberville Parish, and chief enrolling clerk in the Louisiana State Senate.
From 1870 to early 1873, he was the first editor of the Louisianian, a Radical Republican semi-weekly newspaper founded in New Orleans in 1870 by P. B. S. Pinchback, who sought to appeal to white as well as Black readers.
The convention nominated Brown for state superintendent of public instruction on a Republican unity ticket headed by William P. Kellogg.
The Republican ticket swept the bitterly contested 1872 state elections and assumed office on December 10, 1872.
He strengthened fiscal accountability and efficiency, presided over the construction of 213 schoolhouses, fought for greater legislative funding, and upheld school desegregation.