CLAUDE BROWN, N.Y. AUTHOR, 64

1965 Book Opened Nation's Eyes To Ghetto Life

Claude Brown, author of the 1960s civil rights movement classic "Manchild
in the Promised Land," died Feb. 2 at age 64 in New York City from a lung
condition.

Published in 1965 as riots and social unrest rocked major cities throughout
the nation, "Manchild in the Promised Land" described in graphic detail how
violence, drugs and crime locked urban blacks into a cycle of poverty and
hopelessness. It exposed mainstream America to the ugly reality of ghetto life.

Mr. Brown based his bestseller on his own experiences growing up in Harlem
during the 1940s and '50s.

"I'm trying to show more than anything else the humanity of the Negro," Mr.
Brown explained to an interviewer at the time. "Somebody has to stop
problemizing and start humanizing the Negro."

His disturbing tale, told in a dignified voice with vivid images, pulled
back the curtain on urban poverty by chronicling what it was like to grow
up in a street culture populated by murderers, heroin addicts, prostitutes,
homemade guns and knives.

'Had A Powerful Impact'

"Manchild in the Promised Land" sold more than 4 million copies, was
translated into 14 languages and -- 35 years later -- is still required
reading for many high school and college students.

"The book had a powerful impact because of its dramatic, almost shocking
revelation of conditions in Harlem," said John Rickford, director of
African and African American Studies at Stanford University.

Because of the book's impact, critics overnight hailed Mr. Brown as one of
America's most important social commentators, putting him in the same
league as Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin and Richard Wright.

Born in Harlem in 1935, Mr. Brown was the son of a railroad worker and a
domestic who had left South Carolina in the early 1930s and joined the mass
migration of Southern black families to Northern cities. In his book, Mr.
Brown described Harlem as "the promised land that Mammy had been singing
about in the cotton fields for years."

But the "promised land" turned into another form of servitude as
impoverished, uneducated residents found themselves the servant class to
Northern whites.

Like the "Manchild" in his book, Mr. Brown quickly found himself a victim
of ghetto life. By 8, he was thrown out of school, by 9 was a member of a
much-feared street gang, specializing in theft. When he was 11, authorities
sent Mr. Brown to a reform school in upstate New York, the Wiltwyck School,
co-founded by Eleanor Roosevelt. (Mr. Brown dedicated "Manchild" to her.)

Wiltwyck was a turning point for Mr. Brown, for it was there that he met
the school director, Ernest Papanek, who would become an important
influence in his life. Papanek was the first college-educated person the
young boy from Harlem had ever met. Papanek encouraged his bright student
to learn about opportunities beyond the streets of Harlem by reading books
and earning an education.

Mr. Brown spent his adolescence bouncing between reform schools and street
crime. By 13, he had a gunshot wound in the leg during a burglary.

Torn between these two worlds, Mr. Brown finished high school and decided
to pursue a career in law and politics. While a freshman at Howard
University, Mr. Brown received a call from Papanek, who asked him to write
an article for Dissent magazine detailing his life in Harlem.

The raw, passionate language and graphic descriptions attracted the
attention of an editor from MacMillan who gave him a $2,000 advance to
expand the article into a book. It took three years, but Mr. Brown finally
delivered a mammoth 1,537-page manuscript.

The young author graduated from Howard in 1965 with a bachelor's degree and
enrolled in law school at Stanford and Rutgers universities. He never
completed the program.

On The Lecture Circuit

"Manchild" had made him famous, an expert on America's social ills who was
asked to appear before congressional committees and at prestigious
gatherings. In an interview, Mr. Brown explained that he was earning
$60,000 on the lecture circuit, more than he would earn as a lawyer.

Mr. Brown wrote two more books. In 1976, he published "Children of Ham,"
the story of Harlem teenagers who escape from the influence of heroin. His
third book was never completed. It compared the life of children growing up
in Harlem during the 1980s with Harlem street youth of his era.

Mr. Brown is survived by his companion, Laura Higgins; two children; and a
grandson.