Dee Brown

Dee Brown was born in Louisiana, but grew up in rural Arkansas. As a child, he befriended a Native American pitcher on his local baseball team. This experience helped to teach Brown that Native Americans weren’t as violent or backward as they were often portrayed as being. Brown later studied at the Arkansas State Teachers College. During the Great Depression, he worked as a librarian for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In World War Two, he worked as a librarian for the Department of War. In the 1950s, Brown wrote several works of fiction and nonfiction in his spare time, though none was particularly successful. In 1970, however, he published his defining work, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. The success of this book allowed Brown and his wife to retire to Little Rock, Arkansas. He died in 2002.