Robert Span Browne, economist, was born in Chicago and attended public schools in that city. He was awarded the Bachelor of Arts degree with honors in economics from the University of Illinois in 1944, followed by a Masters in business administration from the University of Chicago (1947). Browne continued his graduate studies at the University of Chicago and the London School of Economics, 1951 and 1952, respectively. By 1981 he had completed the course and examination requirements for the Ph.D in economics at the City University of New York.

Browne began his career teaching at New Orleans' Dillard University in 1947 and served as the Industrial Field Secretary for the Chicago Urban League, 1950-1952. Because of a desire to see the world, he used his savings to travel to twenty-four countries in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, his journey lasting approximately one year between 1952 and 1953. This period of foreign travel whetted his appetite for additional trips abroad, and he therefore began to look for ways of parlaying his interests and talents into a position that would allow him to travel. Through contacts at the United Nations he obtained a position with the International Cooperation Administration presently known as the Agency for International Development (AID). He served as an International Trade Advisor to the government of Cambodia and to the U.S. economic aid mission for that country from 1955 to 1958. Among his duties, Browne assisted the Cambodians in formulating a suitable program for justifying their aid allotment. In 1958 AID transferred him to Vietnam, where from 1958 to 1961, holding the title of Assistant Program Officer, he performed similar tasks to those in Cambodia, including the preparation of the annual aid program request submitted to the U.S. Congress. In 1956 he married a Vietnamese resident in Cambodia, Huoi Nguyen.

As a foreign aid officer, Browne observed firsthand the overpowering manner in which the United States was shaping its policy in Vietnam and Cambodia. After his return to the States in 1961 before the American public became aware that a major war was developing in Vietnam, Browne protested American involvement by meeting informally with various groups attempting to alert them to the fact that the U.S. was pursuing a dangerous course in Indochina. Using letters to newspaper editors as a vehicle of protest he wrote to The New York Times and had articles published in other newspapers. In 1962 Browne also began writing a book, which he did not complete, on the political history of Vietnam including the United States military build-up, and offering alternative solutions to Vietnam's internal problems. In 1965 he helped to launch the college teach-in movement, and during the 1960's increased the intensity of his protest, visiting Vietnam in 1965 as a member of the Inter-University Committee for Debate on Foreign Policy, and again in 1967 at the request of Vietnamese Buddhists. In 1966, at the invitation of Congressman Benjamin Rosenthal, he served as a consultant to the Ad Hoc Congressional Committee on Vietnam. Browne was a also member of the Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) which favored the withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam and a reduction of the arms race. He was particularly outspoken concerning African-Americans fighting another people of color. In 1978 he was one of the first Americans to visit Ho Chi Minh City after the American withdrawal of troops in 1975.

As a deeply involved activist against American involvement in Vietnam, Browne ran for the United States Senate from New Jersey as an independent candidate in 1966 on an anti-Vietnam platform. He withdrew his candidacy six weeks prior to the election, officially giving as his reason that he had “hoped to convert New Jersey into a giant classroom and lead a mammoth teach-in.” He believed that the “United States' role in Vietnam [was] based on a number of popular misconceptions and myths....For this reason a major unlearning must take place,” and Browne felt there was not enough time before the election for this to happen. In 1968 he was named a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, pledged to the election of peace candidate Eugene McCarthy for president.

In the late 1960's and early 1970's Browne became actively involved in working for black economic change. He assisted in organizing the National Conference on Black Power in New Jersey, July 1967 and served as the coordinator of the Economic Development Task Force. The conference had been called by Dr. Nathan Wright, Jr. and four hundred black participants attended in the climate of the riot/rebellion which took place in Newark just a few days prior to the scheduled opening of the conference. A highlight of that conference was a resolution calling for a dialogue on the desirability of solving the country's racial problem by partitioning the United States into two sovereign entities, one white, one black. This issue would rage well into the 1970's. Because of the public confusion surrounding the resolution, Browne explained it in greater detail in national magazines in a series of articles particularly “The Case for Negro Separatism.” He thus became associated with the controversial and radical separatist ideology.

Browne's radical political and economic solutions to African-American issues were further developed at the National Black Economic Development Conference (NBEDC) held in Detroit, Michigan in April 1969, where he delivered the keynote address. The conference addressed the liberation of African Americans through economic development as a means of gaining control of their own destiny. The NBEDC sought to bring together a wide representation of people in order to develop a new form of economics along cooperative lines, with broad community involvement. This conference is remembered primarily for James Forman's Black Manifesto, which put forward the demand of reparations to be paid by white churches and Jewish synagogues, as capitalist institutions, to African Americans. The basis for the Manifesto was the exploitation of African-American labor dating from slavery. Five hundred million dollars, or fifteen dollars for every African American, was to have been collected and used for a variety of black economic related objectives, including the funding of a southern land bank, training centers, a university, and the establishment of cooperative business between the United States and Africa.

Although the demand for reparation was not taken seriously by the religious establishment, Browne, over a period of three years, founded and directed three organizations that he felt would assist in realizing some of the objectives outlined in the Manifesto: Black Economic Research Center (1969), Twenty-First Century Foundation (1971) and Emergency Land Fund (1971). In response to the need for black expertise and a black perspective that would produce worthwhile results, Browne founded BERC in 1969 and its quarterly journal “The Review of Black Political Economy”, to conduct research on the American political economy from a black perspective. As a center of applied research, BERC garnered the services of black economists, utilizing their research for many black economic development undertakings. Its staff members were in constant demand as resource persons at conferences, witnesses for Congressional hearings, “expert sources” for quotation in news stories, and for participation on radio and television commentaries. Considering the time period this was a revolutionary change, for the normal pattern had been to rely almost exclusively on whites for such purposes. BERC ceased functioning in 1982 when Browne left the New York area for Africa; however, the journal continues to be published regularly by the National Economic Association. The Twenty-First Century Foundation and Emergency Land Fund (ELF) were developed through BERC. The Twenty-First Century Foundation, a small black-controlled foundation was established to fund black organizations in the fields of education and economic development. The Emergency Land Fund was designed to assist African Americans retain their land holdings in the South and to utilize them effectively. The latter two organizations continue their operations, and although technically autonomous, all three actually functioned as complementary thrusts in a comprehensive effort toward black economic development.

In March 1972 Browne attended the National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana which was co-chaired by Amiri Baraka among others. Browne delivered an address entitled “Economic Development” and also served as an advisor for the Platform Committee for the Economic Empowerment Committee. The convention put forward the National Black Political Agenda, a national program which sought an independent black politics striving toward changes in the realms of economics, human development, international policy, communications, rural development, politics, and other major issues.

In addition to Browne's involvement with the anti-war movement in Vietnam and African-American politics, Browne has held a variety of positions in 1963 he worked as a project director for the Phelps-Stokes Fund. He introduced international affairs programs to black colleges. From 1964-1972 he was an instructor and assistant professor of economics at Fairleigh Dickinson University while serving as adjunct professor of economics at Rutgers University where he developed a new course on the economics of the ghetto, 1969-1970.

Other employment include his appointments as visiting fellow at the Overseas Department Council (1977), visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley (1979), and Executive Director (Representing the United States, the United Kingdom and Yugoslavia) at the African Development Fund, while being stationed in Abidjan, Ivory Coast (1980-1982). Browne also served as Senior Research Fellow of African Studies at Howard University (1982-1985), Staff Director of the Subcommittee on International Development, Finance, Trade and Monetary Policy of the House Banking Committee, where he worked on issues related to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, Third World debt, and exchange rates, among others (1986-1991). He was also a Ford Foundation Research Fellow, investigating regional economic integration in Africa through the African Studies Department, Howard University (1992-1993).

Browne retired in 1993 and since that time has been an economic consultant for Washington, D.C. based organizations. Among those with which he has had sustained contact from 1982 through 1995 are: Africare, Congressional Black Caucus, Institute for Policy Studies, Lincoln University, Overseas Development Council, Project on Military Democracy, and the Washington Office on Africa. In recent years he has focused on issues which relate to African economics. Browne's involvement in United States presidential politics include his serving as Jesse Jackson's advisor on economic policy during his 1984 campaign for the presidency, and making a presentation on U.S.-Africa policy at the Clinton/Gore Economic Summit held in Little Rock, Arkansas shortly after the 1992 election.

Browne has been a profilic writer within his areas of expertise, i.e. American involvement in the Vietnam conflict, especially its impact on African Americans, economics as it pertains to African Americans and to a lesser extent, to Africans, in addition to race relations on an international scale. Most of his writings have been in the form of articles, speeches, letters to the editor and book reviews as well as writing or co-authoring several books.

Browne's first book, Race Relations in International Affairs (1961) analyzes the history of racism toward blacks and other non-white people and its impact on world unity at the time. In his writings concerning Vietnam, Browne discussed French involvement in the country and his early protests relating to African Americans fighting in Vietnam. The majority of Browne's writings, however, consists of articles pertaining to traditional American economic and political practices as they affect blacks and his progressively more radical approach to black control of these areas of black life. His most controversial article entitled “The Case for Negro Separatism” which appeared in Ramparts in 1968 grew out of the National Conference on Black Power in that same year, with a subsequent booklet, “Separatism or Integration Which Way for America? A Dialogue: Robert A. Browne, Bayard Rustin.”