In Memoriam - Harold K. (Hal) Brown
Civil rights leader, San Diego State University administrator, SDSU alumnus and student-athlete. Harold K. (Hal) Brown was all of these things. He was also a lover of libraries, and the University Library joins the rest of the SDSU community in remembering Hal’s many contributions to the community following his death on May 6, on his 92nd birthday.
The SDSU NewsCenter has published a complete tribute to Brown, noting his many accomplishments at SDSU and his service to the San Diego community.
Brown’s belief in the transformative power of libraries is evident in the many gifts he made to the University Library over the years, including, most importantly, the Harold K. Brown Papers. These papers document Brown's participation in the local Civil Rights Movement, his dedication to community economic development, and his professional life, with a heavy emphasis on the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Brown's role in the School Integration Task Force, and his involvement with the Black Economic Development Task Force. Highlights include the Congress of Racial Equality's actions against the employment practices of the San Diego Zoo, SDG&E, Montgomery Ward, and Bank of America. The collection consists of correspondence, reports, meeting minutes, slides, reel-to-reels of the "Viewpoint" program on KSDO Radio, and photographs. In addition, the collection's extensive newspaper clippings include articles from and full issues of The Voice, The San Diego Light House, the San Diego Monitor, and Logan Heights' Independent. The majority of materials date from 1963 to 1966 and the mid-1990s.
A key part of his papers details his leadership of the local chapter of the CORE, which fought discriminatory employment practices and housing segregation in San Diego. University Archivist Amanda Lanthorne says, “That portion of his papers is a goldmine for researchers and a major part of his legacy.”
The library also holds an oral history interview of Brown, allowing listeners to hear about his lif in his own words.
The mural on the first floor of the Library Addition shows Brown and seven other Black luminaries from SDSU history.
The library will also house a new mural in the Africana Studies Collection Area, funded, in part, by a gift from the Brown family, titled “Civil Rights & Champions of San Diego,” which will incorporate images and information from the Brown collection. The mural will be unveiled in 2027 and will feature interactive technology and digital images related to the Civil Rights movement in San Diego. The mural has been designed by Avery Caldwell (PSFA School of Art & Design) with input from a committee comprising faculty and staff from the library and other colleges.
As SDSU Library Dean Scott Walter said in the memorial article published in NewsCenter: “Hal Brown was one of the first ‘Friends of the Library,’ who I met when I arrived at SDSU in 2020, and I quickly learned how much he believed in the power of libraries, archives, and museums to further SDSU’s missions of learning, scholarship, and engagement.”
“His collection,” Walter continued, “is one of the foundations of our collections reflecting the diversity of SDSU and the broader San Diego community. Hal always took pleasure in hearing about the most recent class that used his materials or the most recent researcher who consulted them. We are privileged to be the stewards of Hal’s legacy and to ensure that his story, and the story of the movement he helped to make, remains available to the SDSU community.”
