Mildred Brown was born in Bessemer, Alabama in 1915 to Rev. and Mrs. Bennie J. Brown, a prominent African-American family.  Her mother was a teacher.  They encouraged her education.  In 1931 Mildred graduated from Miles College, an historically black college founded in Birmingham, Alabama by the Christian Methodist Episcopl Church.

Mildred worked as a teacher in Birmingham, where she met and married S. Edward Gilbert, a pharmacy graduate of Howard University.  They moved to Chicago, where Mildred studied at Chicago Normal College, and then to Des Moines Iowa, where she took journalism at Drake University

The Omaha Star "Dedicated to the service of the people that no good cause shall lack a champion and that evil shall not go unopposed"

In an introduction to the newspaper, Mildred Wrote:

To the Citizens of Omaha, it is with profound pleasure that the Omaha Star Publishing Cop., and organization of energetic, well trained journalistic minds, give to you this day a paper of the people, but the people and for the people.  We here and now wish to have you know that the Omaha Star dedicates its existence to the task of serving the general public in every way humanly possible.  It shall be our policy to move in an unerring path of duty in the behalf of Black America in Omaha, bringing to you the local news of the city as we find it, as well as the national highlights.  Promoting and backing for the welfare of the citizens of Omaha and Black America in general.