George Brown Jr.

George Edward Brown Jr. (March 6, 1920 – July 15, 1999) was an American Democratic politician from California. He represented suburban portions of Los Angeles County in the United States House of Representatives from 1963 to 1971 and parts of the Inland Empire region from 1973 until his death in 1999. He briefly left office after unsuccessfully running for the United States Senate in 1970.

Brown was born in Holtville, California, and was one of four children of George Edward Brown and Bird Alma Kilgore. Brown graduated from Holtville Union High School in 1935 and attended Central Junior College (now Imperial Valley College) in 1938. He then entered the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he became head of the UCLA Student Housing Association and helped found the University Cooperative Housing Association (UCHA), a student housing cooperative, in 1938. The UCHA was formed in part to allow African American students to live off campus in the Westwood section of Los Angeles, which then did not allow them in the neighborhood. To emphasize the point, Brown took an African American roommate in the first interracial housing arrangement at UCLA. The experience was also the first example of Brown's lifelong association with cooperatives.

Shortly after the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps, an action that offended Brown so much that he helped organize protests in Los Angeles in 1942. Brown's college education was interrupted by the draft, but as a Quaker, he had registered as a conscientious objector, and in 1942, he entered the Civilian Public Service at Camp 21 in Wyeth, Oregon. During his service at Camp 21, Brown realized that he could not change the broader society while he was isolated in Civilian Public Service and rescinded his conscientious objector status in 1944, entering the United States Army, serving in World War II as an instructor and rising to the rank of lieutenant by the time of his discharge in 1946.

Once the war ended, he returned to college, finishing his education at UCLA, where he graduated with a BS degree in Industrial Physics in 1946.

For 12 years, he was employed by the city of Los Angeles in the Department of Water and Power in engineering and personnel. In 1958, he became a management consultant.

Brown continued his political activism by invigorating the Monterey Park Democratic Club.

In 1954, Brown was elected as a member of the city council of Monterey Park, and served until 1958. In 1956, Brown became the mayor of Monterey Park, California, until 1958.

Brown's activism on behalf of civil rights continued during his term as mayor, as was evidenced by a report that when the first African American family moved to Monterey Park and met with racist protests, Brown drove to the family's home, where he spent the night to protect them.