George Brown Jr. | |
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Chairman of the House Science Committee | |
In office January 3, 1991 – January 3, 1995 |
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Speaker | Tom Foley |
Preceded by | Robert A. Roe |
Succeeded by | Robert S. Walker |
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California's 42nd district |
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In office January 3, 1993 – July 15, 1999 |
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Preceded by | Dana Rohrabacher |
Succeeded by | Joe Baca |
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California's 36th district |
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In office January 3, 1975 – January 3, 1993 |
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Preceded by | William M. Ketchum |
Succeeded by | Jane Harman |
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California's 38th district |
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In office January 3, 1973 – January 3, 1975 |
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Preceded by | Victor V. Veysey |
Succeeded by | Jerry M. Patterson |
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California's 29th district |
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In office January 3, 1963 – January 3, 1971 |
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Preceded by | Dalip Singh Saund |
Succeeded by | George E. Danielson |
Member of the California State Assembly | |
In office 1959–1962 |
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Personal details | |
Born |
George Edward Brown Jr. March 6, 1920 Holtville, California, U.S. |
Died | July 15, 1999 Bethesda, Maryland, U.S. |
(aged 79)
Political party | Democratic |
Alma mater | University of California, Los Angeles |
Religion | Quaker |
George Edward Brown Jr. (March 6, 1920 – July 15, 1999) was an American politician. He was a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives from 1963 to 1971 and from 1973 until his death in Bethesda, Maryland in 1999, representing Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Riverside counties in California.
Brown was born in Holtville, California, one of four children of George Edward Brown Sr. and Bird Alma Kilgore. Brown graduated from Holtville Union High School in 1935 and attended Central Junior College (now Imperial Valley College) in 1938. He then entered the University of California. Los Angeles (UCLA) where he became head of the UCLA Student Housing Association and helped found the University Housing Cooperative Association (UHCA), a student housing cooperative, in 1938. The UHCA was formed in part to allow African American students to live off campus in the Westwood section of Los Angeles which at that time did not allow African Americans in the neighborhood. To emphasize the point, Brown took an African American roommate in the first inter-racial housing arrangement at UCLA. The UCHA experience was also the first example of Brown's lifelong association with cooperatives.
Shortly after the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps, an action that offended Brown so much that he helped organize protests in Los Angeles in 1942. At this point, Brown's college education was interrupted by the draft, although as a Quaker, he had registered as a conscientious objector and in 1942, he entered the Civilian Public Service at Camp 21 in Wyeth, Oregon. During his service at Camp 21 Brown realized that he could not change the broader society while isolated in Civilian Public Service and he rescinded his conscientious objector status in 1944, entering the United States Army, serving in World War II as an instructor and rising to the rank of lieutenant by the time of his discharge in 1946.