Biography
Paul Brown was an unemployed-workers organizer detained at the Bayonne, New Jersey police station after asking for a parade permit on Monday, December 28, 1931. The Daily Worker of December 30, pages 1-2, reports that he was held overnight, repeatedly beaten, photographed and fingerprinted, and pressured to sign a blank card. It says police tried to identify him as an Indianapolis man accused of killing his parents; the paper rebutted this by reporting that Brown's father had died four years earlier and his mother was living in the Bronx. The police chief reportedly admitted that no charge existed beyond Brown's visit to seek the permit. The report does not establish Brown's release or eventual disposition. His relationship, if any, to the later Communist official Paul Brown, born Samuel Horowitz, is unverified; those histories have not been merged.
The January 2, 1932 follow-up reports that Brown spent seventy-two hours in solitary confinement, the first twenty-four without food or water, and suffered repeated beatings. A habeas proceeding quashed the cases against him and John Kasper, but Brown was nevertheless returned to his cell until Thursday morning. With the already established Monday December 28 arrest, that Thursday is December 31, 1931. This supplies actual release and three documented days; it applies to the Bayonne organizer, not the later Paul Brown born Samuel Horowitz. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1932/v09-n002-NY-anniversary-ed-jan-02-1932-DW-LOC.pdf#page=6
