Lloyd L. Brown

Lloyd Louis Brown (April 3, 1913 – April 1, 2003) was an American labor organizer, Communist Party activist, journalist, novelist, friend and editorial companion of Paul Robeson's, and a Robeson biographer.

Brown was born Lloyd Dight in St. Paul, Minnesota, son of African-American Ralph Dight, a waiter originally from Alabama, and Magdalena Paul Dight, from Stearns County, Minnesota.

Brown and his three siblings were raised Roman Catholic and attended St. Peter Claver Church in St. Paul, an African-American parish. After Magdalena Dight died in 1917 Brown and his brother Ralph lived first in the Catholic Orphan Asylum in Minneapolis, then for two years in the Crispus Attucks Home, an African-American orphanage and old folks home in St. Paul.

Brown attended the Cathedral School through eighth grade, then Cretin (now Cretin-Derham Hall) After receiving a reprimand in catechism class he quit school and educated himself for a year at the St. Paul Public Library. He also joined the Young Communist League (then known as the Young Workers League.)

In 1929 Brown left St. Paul for Youngstown, Ohio, to work in the steel mills there. Because of the stock market crash of that year no steel jobs could be had, so Brown found work of a different sort: at the age of 16 he became a Communist labor organizer. He then took the surname Brown in honor of the anti-slavery zealot John Brown. Lloyd Brown spent the next decade as a labor organizer in Ohio, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania, and also visited the Soviet Union as a journalist. His labor organizing in Western Pennsylvania landed him a stint in the Allegheny County Jail in Pittsburgh. After release he joined the US Army Air Corps and rose to the rank of sergeant.

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