Oscar Brown Sr. was a prominent Chicago businessman, lawyer and community activist. He was the father of

Oscar Brown Jr. Oscar Brown Jr. (October 10, 1926May 29, 2005) was an American singer, songwriter, playwright, poet, civil rights activist, and actor. Aside from his career, Brown ran unsuccessfully for office in both the Illinois state legislature and the U. ...

Biography

Oscar Cicero Brown was born near

Camden, Arkansas Camden is a city in and the county seat of Ouachita County in the south-central part of the U.S. state of Arkansas. The city is located about 100 miles south of Little Rock. Situated on bluffs overlooking the Ouachita River, the city developed ...

, on December 22, 1895. In 1916, he graduated from Howard University in

Washington, DC ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan ...

, with degrees in commerce and law. He served in the military during

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. Lists birthdate as December 23, 1895 and place of birth as Congles Mills, Arkansas In 1929, he founded the law firm of Brown, Brown, Cyrus and Green in Chicago. Gradually, he turned his attention away from law and started the Oscar C. Brown Real Estate Corp. and spent a good part of his life on issues relating to real estate, either as a developer, an activist or as an administrator. In the mid-1930s, disillusioned with the progress of racial integration, Brown seriously considered the concept of separatism. He led a group of African-American intellectuals to initiate the

National Movement for the Establishment of a 49th State The National Movement for the Establishment of the 49th State was an intellectual movement popular among African-American separatists during the 1930s. The movement sought to create a state for African Americans in the American South. The movement ...

(there were only 48 United States at the time). He wanted to make a state for only African Americans. In 1944, Brown served as president of the Chicago branch of the

NAACP The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E.&nb ...

. A major focus of his efforts there were to protest housing segregation and to improve police enforcement in predominantly African-American neighborhoods. He became the first African American appointed to the real estate planning committee of the Illinois Department of Registration and Education in 1964. Brown was also a member of

Alpha Phi Alpha Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. () is the oldest intercollegiate historically African American fraternity. It was initially a literary and social studies club organized in the 1905–1906 school year at Cornell University but later evolved int ...

fraternity. He died at the University of Chicago Hospital on October 1, 1990, after a lengthy illness.

Personal

Entertainer and activist

is his son. He is also the brother of William H. Brown, who was a prominent attorney based in Chicago.

References

1895 births 1990 deaths American real estate businesspeople 20th-century American lawyers Howard University alumni Howard University School of Law alumni People from Camden, Arkansas 20th-century American businesspeople {{ethno-activist-stub