Stanley Branche

Stanley Everett Branche (July 31, 1933 – December 22, 1992) was an American civil rights leader from Pennsylvania who worked as executive secretary in the Chester, Pennsylvania, branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and founded the Committee for Freedom Now (CFFN).

In the early 1960s, he and George Raymond partnered to challenge minority hiring practices of businesses and initiated the Chester school protests against de facto segregation of schools which made Chester one of the key battlegrounds of the civil rights movement. He protested with the Cambridge Movement in Dorchester County, Maryland, and worked with Cecil B. Moore to desegregate Girard College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He worked with the Greater Chester Movement and the Black Coalition in Philadelphia. He ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Chester in 1967 and twice for U.S. Congress in 1978 and 1986. He left the civil rights movement and ran multiple businesses including co-ownership of a nightclub in Philadelphia with drug kingpin, Major Coxson. In 1989, he was convicted and sentenced to 5 years in federal prison for his participation in an organized crime collection scheme.