​​Harold K. Brown is a champion of civil rights, a conservator of African American history and a lifelong crusader on behalf of equality and economic opportunity for San Diego’s underrepresented communities. He was awarded an honorary degree from SDSU in 2017 for his achievements and lasting legacy.

Brown co-founded and served as chair of the local chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality in 1961 and became its regional chairman. Despite being arrested and jailed for protesting discriminatory hiring, he continued to challenge unfair employment and housing practices by organizing demonstrations and sit-ins throughout San Diego. Later, he was the first Black administrator at San Diego State University and helped develop the Afro-American Studies Program/Black Studies. (Now the Department of Africana Studies.)

Brown's oral histories have been recorded by the Civil Rights Oral History Project of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and by the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. SDSU also has recorded an oral history. And through his advocacy, support and the donation of his own personal papers, the SDSU Library established the Harold K. Brown Civil Rights and African American Experience Collection, which preserves historical photographs, documents and oral accounts essential to understanding the African American experience in San Diego and the United States. Some selections have been digitized.

Brown was the youngest of seven children and grew up in York, Pennsylvania. He enrolled at San Diego State College on a basketball scholarship in 1953. He was president of Kappa Alpha Psi, the first black fraternity on campus; a star basketball player who also lettered in baseball; and a student council representative who challenged the discriminatory practices of fraternities and sororities.

Brown’s college education was interrupted by a two-year stint in the U.S Army Signal Corps. After serving in the military, he earned a degree from San Diego State in physical education and later earned a master’s degree in business administration from Fordham University.

Brown worked as a teacher, a banker and as deputy director of the Peace Corps in Lesotho, Africa, before returning to SDSU in 1971 to take a job in Academic Affairs. He established the Afro-American Studies program, led creation of its curriculum and became its first director.

He also created a certificate program in community economic development within the Fowler College of Business. This program later expanded into the Center for Community Economic Development under Brown’s direction and offered classes in finance, accounting and leadership to train professionals to develop underserved communities. In 1992, Brown was honored as National Minority Small Business Advocate of the Year. He retired from SDSU in 1997 but continued as director of the center until 2004.

Today, Brown leads efforts to increase public appreciation of the importance of the civil rights movement.