Claude Brown

Claude Brown (February 23, 1937 - February 2, 2002) is the author of Manchild in the Promised Land, published to critical acclaim in 1965, which tells the story of his coming of age during the 1940s and 1950s in Harlem. He also published Children of Ham (1976).

The autobiographical Manchild in the Promised Land describes the cultural, economic, and religious conditions that suffused Harlem during Brown's early childhood and adolescence while constructing a narrative of Brown's tumultuous early life. The book explains that in the early 20th century, New York was thought to be the promised land for African Americans, but life in Harlem was more challenging than migrants expected. Brown’s parents, who had been sharecroppers, moved from South Carolina to Harlem in 1935 before they had children and lived in a tenement at 146th Street and Eighth Avenue. Brown had one younger brother and two sisters. From the age of six, his life involved stealing, alcohol consumption, truancy, and gang wars. These harsh realities of life in 1950s Harlem shaped his childhood. Hoping that a year away from Harlem would benefit him, his parents sent him to live with his grandparents in South Carolina. However, this just made Brown crave the violence of the streets. At the age of 11, he was placed in the Wiltwyck School for Boys, a reform school, which he cycled in and out of more than three times.

By that time he had made the acquaintance of Dr. Ernest Papanek, a psychologist and the director of the Wiltwyck School for Boys for deprived and emotionally disturbed boys, in Esopus, Ulster County, New York. Dr. Papanek, whom Mr. Brown described in his book as "probably the smartest and the deepest cat I had ever met," encouraged him to seek an education. Although Dr. Papanek pushed him towards getting a better education, Brown still had criminal contacts at Wiltwyck and continued to be involved in street life. Brown had many brushes with the law and had to go to various juvenile detention institutions several times. During one robbery, Brown was shot in the stomach and almost died. In Brown’s mid-teens, he made a living by dealing drugs and becoming a con man. In 1953, he worked in the garment district, but he quit the job after a short time. His younger brother, who he had always thought of as being innocent, had become addicted to drugs. In Manchild in the Promised Land, Brown blames his brother’s unhealthy lifestyle on not having been exposed to the horrors of Harlem early enough in life.

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