At some point during my high school years, I remember attending an assembly that seemed to occur on the spur of a moment. At least to my memory there was no announcement other than the one given for us to go to the auditorium.
I don’t remember if girls were present at this assembly. I do remember that Principal Joe Day introduced to us the speaker, a man with a common-sounding name. He turned out to be anything but common.
The speaker’s name was Jack Brown. He told us his life story that day.
I might not remember anything about this episode of my high school career except that I was so impressed with his story I purchased a copy of his autobiography, Monkey Off My Back. It must have been meant to be—it was not usual for me to have any money on my person at all during my school days, other than possibly a dime for an after-lunch ice cream. As you might have guessed if you know me at all, I still have that book in my home library.
It’s remarkable how the past often comes to revisit at unexpected moments. On one of my recent visits to KARM I ran across a 33 1/3 album that this same Jack Brown had recorded. I actually now have two record albums that tell the life story of this interesting man.
One of the albums is a recording of a talk he made to a group of students in high school that would have undoubtedly been the story Mr. Brown shared with us at Horace Maynard High all those years ago. The other recording is of a presentation he delivered in a church service. The stories are very similar.
If you do a Google search on “Jack Brown Prisoner in Leavenworth,” you will find more information about Mr. Brown. He related that his life of crime began when he ran away from home at a young age. Eventually he descended into drug/alcohol use and crime to the point that he was incarcerated in six prisons over many years of his life, including Leavenworth, San Quentin and Alcatraz.
I’m not sure how much some of the names of the people that Mr. Brown came to know during his prison life would mean to most young people today. At the time I was in high school, the names were still in vogue enough to be impressive and made Mr. Brown’s speech all the more interesting.
He had the experience of getting to know George (Machine Gun) Kelly, Robert Stroud (The Birdman of Alcatraz), Al Capone, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker (Bonnie and Clyde).
One of the interesting things that Mr. Brown pointed out on the record albums is how the media glamorized these criminals, in particular Bonnie and Clyde. Movies were made about their escapades, much like movies and television programs portrayed Frank and Jesse James as archetypes of the Old West. Mr. Brown related enough about his experiences to let us know that the life of crime was not a desirable one, and that it resulted in either death or sad ends in prison for most of these criminals.
It might occur to you, Faithful Reader, to wonder why Joseph F. Day, Principal of Horace Maynard High School and a Baptist minister, would allow a convict to speak to his students.
Mr. Brown was one of the few fortunate ones. He endured many years of incarceration, even surviving a fight that almost resulted in his and his opponent’s death, to return to society as a reformed individual. Thanks to the encouragement of his wife (who stood by him through all his years of imprisonment) and his daughter, he became a converted Christian and devoted the remainder of his life to sharing his story with untold thousands of young people in schools and in churches, warning them to avoid the depravity he had brought upon himself for the greater portion of his life. Eventually Mr. Brown was pardoned by California Governor Pat Brown, but only after years of drug abuse and incarceration.
For more information about Mr. Brown, enter media.sbhla.org.s3.amazonaws.com/3875,25-Oct-1974.pdf into your internet browser and you will find a reprint of an article written by Teena Andrews for Baptist Press. At the time the article was written, Mr. Brown was in his 70s. I was a student at Horace Maynard High School from 1978 through 1983, so Mr. Brown would have been in either his upper 70s or possibly early 80s at the time I heard him speak.
I was thrilled to find copies of his records—I am sure very few of them exist. Mr. Brown’s speaking voice brought to my mind the voice of the late Rev. J. Bazzell Mull, a well-known name to many people in the East Tennessee area and host for many decades of the Mull’s Singing Convention every Sunday morning.
I wonder if anyone who attended Horace Maynard High School at the time I did remembers Mr. Brown’s assembly. If so, I wish you would contact me so we could share the remembrance. It should come as no surprise that the book Monkey Off My Back is available on amazon.com. I highly recommend the book as an extremely good read.
I did not find a reference to Mr. Brown’s death in my search for further information about him, but he must surely have passed away by now. Yet his story lives on. The wonderful thing about books and records is that they keep the past alive. Mr. Brown did not use the media available at his time to glamorize his past—rather, he used it to warn others to avoid the wrong choices he made. Thanks to his autobiography and recordings, Mr. Brown’s story of reform continues to be shared many years after his own life ended.
Next week I want to share some dirt with you. For now, Faithful Reader, I leave you with this thought from my email world:
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment.