His political consciousness was shaped at a young age
Born Ronald Harmon Brown on August 1, 1941, his sense of self-worth and political consciousness was shaped by the key personalities and civil rights activists who passed through his family’s hotel; including prominent individuals such as Joe Louis, Dinah Washington, and Josephine Baker. His formative years were mostly at the Hunter College Elementary School, which was a predominately white public school.
He later attended the White Plains High School and the Rhodes School in Manhattan, institutions of learning which were attended mostly by children of middle-class African Americans, according to the library of congress. He then completed his tertiary education at Middlebury College in Vermont in 1962. He struggled as a pre-med student but began showing academic excellence when he switched his major to political science.
