Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,693

This is the grave of Paul Brown.

Born in 1880 in Hartwell, Georgia, Brown went to the University of Georgia and then got a law degree from the same school in 1901. He passed the bar almost immediately and started a practice in the town of Lexington, Georgia. He got involved in politics pretty quickly. He had a quick term in the Georgia legislature in 1907 and became mayor of Lexington in 1908, serving in that position for six years.

Brown mostly left politics after 1914 for awhile and in 1920 moved to the town of Elberton. He practiced there for several years before returning to politics in 1928, when he became county attorney. He did that for four years and was a delegate to the 1932 Democratic National Convention. The next year, the congressman in his district died. Brown ran in the special election to replace him. He won and never left Congress. In classic southern form, he served until just a few months before he died. One big reason the South long held such power in Congress is that the region would send the same people back forever, which did not happen nearly as much in the North.

But let’s be clear, Brown was terrible. He was the classic mid-20th century southern racist. His major political position was racism and of course in that he represented the, er, voting members of his district, which was pretty white anyway, mostly covering the upcountry of northeast Georgia near the South Carolina border. He was a big supporter of the Southern manifesto, hated all civil rights legislation, opposed anti-lynching legislation.

In 1960, Brown finally decided to not run for reelection. He served through the end of his term in 1961 and then died later that year, at the age of 81.

But like, that’s about all the info one can find on this guy. Even going into tools such as the usually excellent New Georgia Encyclopedia and Google Books come up with basically nothing. This is interesting in its own right. First, let us remember, the guy was in Congress for almost 30 years! This is not some one-term legislator. There is literally not an article on him in the New Georgia Encyclopedia. There’s one on Paul Broun, the long-time Georgia state senator, who briefly served in Congress in the 2000s, and who you may remember. Even minor league baseball player Ralph “Country” Brown from the Atlanta Crackers has one! But not Paul Brown. I don’t really know what to say here except that this guy must really have been a non-entity, even for Congress, and that’s a high bar.

I cover very few members of Congress in this series for the reason that most of them don’t do anything remotely interesting, and that probably includes your congressman, as it certainly includes mine. I didn’t visit this cemetery to see this guy, but I’m thinking, OK, 28 years, there’s got to be something to say here.

Nope! Well, except for his grave making the claim about his worldwide recognition…..

Incidentally, I haven’t written up the grave that I did visit this cemetery for, but for someone you all have never heard of, this is going to be pure evil at the peak of this entire series. So stay tuned.

Paul Brown is buried in Elmhurst Cemetery, Elberton, Georgia.

If you would like this series to visit other members of Congress, who, I don’t know, maybe did something, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Many thanks to those who did donate to keep this series going the other day. John Dingell, the all-time leader for years in the House and who very, very much did a lot of things, is in Arlington and I will have to check that out next time I am there. Jamie Whitten, another basic non-entity who also happens to have the second longest tenure ever in the House, from 1941-95, is in Charleston, Mississippi. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.