Claude Brown’s "Manchild in the Promised Land," a memoir about growing up in Harlem during the 1940s and ‘50s, was such as success that by the turn of this century, it had become the second best-selling book that Macmillan Books ever published – after "Gone with the Wind."

The book was published in 1965, at the peak of the civil rights movement, and drew some attention from the plight of black Americans in the south and refocused it on the lives of black people in urban centers. The story transcended the traditional literary world, selling more than 4 million copies and translated into 14 languages.

It launched Brown’s career as a freelance writer, giving him entrée to a major magazines, including The Saturday Evening Post, Life, Look, Esquire and The New York Times Magazine.

Born Feb. 23, 1937, Brown spent much of his childhood getting into scrapes with the law, beginning at age eight when he was kicked out of school. The next year he had become a member of a street gang, was shot in the leg during a burglary at age 13 and was sent to reform school at 14.

According to RaceMatters.com, Brown began to turn his life around with the mentoring of Ernest Papanek, a psychologist and the director of the Wiltwyck School for deprived and emotionally disturbed boys, who took an interest in Brown and successfully encouraged him to pursue education.

Brown attended night school and worked at a variety of jobs, including busboy and deliveryman, to support himself. He graduated from high school and went to Howard University and graduated in 1965.

While at Howard, Papanek asked Brown to write an article for Dissent magazine, which caught the attention of an editor at Macmillan, who offered Brown a $2,000 to write a book. It took Brown two years to complete the book, which sat for a year at the publisher’s until a new editor took it up.

The memoir, thinly veiled as fiction, was published to rave reviews.

“This is a magnificent book, not a good book, not an interesting book, a magnificent book,” wrote Dick Schaap. “It is a guided tour of hell conducted by a man who broke out.”

Author James Baldwin hailed it as a “tremendous achievement,” and Romulus Linney, writing in The New York Times Book Review, said “It is written with brutal and unvarnished honesty in the plain talk of the people, in language that is fierce, uproarious, obscene and tender.”

Brown went on to law school, wrote magazine pieces, lectured and taught before writing "The Children of Ham," a story about struggling young blacks in Harlem and their efforts to escape the influence of the drug scene. Over the years, he continued to write about the impact of drugs on children and started, but did not finish a book in which he compared his childhood experiences with those of young people growing up during the crack epidemic in Harlem in the 1980s.

The author, who had moved to Newark, N.J.,  spent a lot of time in Harlem helping young people get and stay on the right track and he supported a Newark-based, eight-week residential treatment program aimed at helping young people in the criminal justice system to turn their lives

Brown died Feb. 6, 2002 of a lung condition. He was 64.

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