Claude Brown is the author of Manchild in the Promised Land, published to critical acclaim in 1965, which tells the story of his coming of age during the 1940s and 1950s in Harlem. He also published Children of Ham . Autobiographical in nature, Manchild in the Promised Land describes the cultural, economic, and religious conditions that suffused Harlem during Brown's early childhood and adolescence while constructing a narrative of Brown's tumultuous early life. Starting at age six, his life involved stealing, alcohol consumption, truancy, and gang wars. These were the harsh realities of... life in 1950s Harlem that shaped his childhood. At the age of 11, he was placed in a reform school, which he cycled in and out of more than three times. By that time he had made the acquaintance of Dr. Ernest Papanek, a psychologist and the director of the Wiltwyck School for Boys for deprived and emotionally disturbed boys, which was in Esopus, Ulster County, New York. Dr. Papanek, whom Mr. Brown described in his book as "probably the smartest and the deepest cat I had ever met," encouraged him to seek an education.
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