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The speaker is author Claude Brown. He wrote the classic novel Manchild In The Promised Land. It describes his life growing up in Harlem New York in the 1950s with street gangs, violence, drugs, and alcohol consumption.

His parents were sharecroppers in Georgia. They moved to New York City with the hope of a better life. Claude grew up in a gang environment which he loved as he describes in this video clip. He was actively involved in stealing, heavy alcohol alcohol consumption, gang wars.

He was a very juvenile delinquent kid and his parents sent him to relatives in South Carolina in the hopes of getting him out of that culture. He wrote that he missed the violence on the streets and he quickly found his way back to the gang world.

The New York State juvenile court system sent him to the famous Wiltwick School For Boys. We New Yorkers knew it as the place you went if you were really bad. He met a psychiatrist there who encouraged him to seek an education, but when he went back on the streets, he returned to the violent drug infested world he loved. He was shot in the stomach and almost died.

Deciding that he had to get out of that culture and desiring an education, he moved to New York’s Greenwich Village to get away from the gang culture that he loved. He was sad to see friends of his go down as a result of drugs and dangerous living.

He wrote the book Manchild In The Promised Land. Today, while the book is studied in many high schools as part of their English programs, it is also banned in others because of its “foul language.” I got to interview Claude in 1989 for my television series on the 1960s. Although the video of my interview was destroyed in a fire that destroyed much of my archives in 2008, I did did keep this interview which was given me by New York public television station WNET, who broadcast this incredible interview with Claude right after he wrote his book.

The interviewer is Norman Podhoretz. The interview took place in 1965, sometime after Claude Brown's book was released.

Claude Brown died in 2002 at 64 years old

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