Background
Brown was born Lloyd Dight in Saint Paul, Minnesota, son of African-American Ralph Dight, a waiter originally from Alabama, and Magdalena Paul Dight, from Stearns County, Minnesota.
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Lloyd Brown
Edit ProfileEducation
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 Saint Paul Public Library. He also joined the Young Communist League (then known as the Young Workers League).
Career
In 1929 Brown left Saint 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 age 16 he became a Communist labor organizer. 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 United States Army Air Corps and rose to the rank of sergeant. After World World War II Brown moved to New York City and began writing, first for the weekly The New Masses, and then its successor, the monthly Masses & Mainstream, both Marxist journals.
Brown wrote on labor organizing, lynchings, baseball, among other topics, plus fiction and editorials. He served as managing editor of New Masses from 1946 to 1948 and associate editor of Masses & Mainstream from 1948 to 1952.
In this literary environment Brown worked with celebrated leftist writers such as Dalton Trumbo, Meridel Le Sueur , Herbert Aptheker, and, of greatest consequence to Brown, Paul Robeson.
In 1951 Brown published a novel, Iron City, based on his experiences in the Allegheny County Jail, the fictionalized tale of his and other inmates’ efforts to save Willie Jones, condemned to death for murder. Brown began working with Paul Robeson in 1950, helped him write his column for the Harlem newspaper, Freedom, and 1958 his autobiography, Here I Stand. In 1997 he published a partial biography, The Young Paul Robeson: On My Journey Now (Westview Press) In 2001 the Minnesota Historical Society republished, in its quarterly magazine Minnesota History, Brown’s 1948 fictionalized memoir of his years at the Crispus Attucks Home, God’s Chosen People.
Brown lived his last decades in New York City.
Lily Brown died in 1996. A playground in Fort Washington Park is named for her.
Lloyd Brown died in New York on April 1, 2003.
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Born
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Died
April 1, 2003 (aged 89) -
Nationality
United States -
Political Party
Communist Party