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Brown, Frank London

Frank London Brown

The literary reputation of Frank London Brown (1927-1962) rises and falls with Trumbull Park (1959), the single novel he published during his short life.  Documenting the challenges faced by an African American family seeking to integrate a Chicago housing project, Trumbull Park is shaped by the influence of Richard Wright and of two earlier Chicago-focused naturalists Wright had emulated, Theodore Dreiser and Upton Sinclair.  In the words of critic James C. Hall, the strength of Brown’s novel lies in its “detailed description of the ‘everyday’ of urban African American experience…and [its] philosophically sophisticated account of the rise of despair in the ghetto.”  To Langston Hughes’s mind, however, this despair was Trumbull Park’s ultimate adversary: “How, in the end, determination and decency seem about to triumph, is the theme of this story, unfolded in terms of characters terribly alive and real.”  Much like Wright, Brown moved to Chicago at the age of twelve and was attracted to the city’s political left, later serving as an organizer for the United Packinghouse Workers.  Unlike the older writer, however, Brown was also drawn to Bebop jazz, publishing an interview with Thelonious Monk in Down Beat magazine and reading his fiction to the tune of jazz accompaniment.  Brown first came to FBI attention as a unionist and Communist sympathizer in 1955, and was rewarded with a place on the Security Index, the kind of Bureau weapon Congressman Vito Marcantonio termed "terror by index cards."

F.L. Brown Part 1

F.L. Brown Part 2

Title
Brown, Frank London

Description
FBI documents studying Frank London Brown.

Creator
FBI

Publisher
FBI

Date
1955-1957

Rights
Material is in the public domain.

Format
text, 90 PDFs, 400 ppi

Language
English

Type
text

Coverage
1955-1957