Researcher: Enzo Gilchrist, Stuyvesant '27

Otto Brown was born in Jersey City on the 24th of March, 1912. Prior to becoming a volunteer, he lived in New York City and worked as a plumber. His involvement in the anti-fascist cause began with joining the Communist Party USA in 1934. As a working-class man living in New York City, the epicenter of American radical politics in the 1930s, he was likely impressed by the Communists’ work in the labor movement and its fierce opposition to the fascist threat that was ascendant internationally.


Because of his involvement in the Communist Party, Otto Brown was aware of the significance of the Republic’s struggle in the Spanish Civil War and the danger that fascism posed to the working class. This awareness motivated him, along with thousands of other Americans, to volunteer to fight in Spain as part of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.


Brown arrived in Spain on February 14, 1937, after crossing the Atlantic Ocean on the Paris. As a volunteer, he belonged to the John Brown Field Artillery Battery, named for the American abolitionist John Brown. The unit was created in April 1937 and its members were mostly Americans and Canadians. It is unclear whether Otto Brown was a member of the unit from when it was created.


The John Brown Field Artillery Battery saw combat in Castuera in April 1937, in Tajo, and on the Center Front until September 1938. Otto Brown likely participated in some of these battles.


On February 4, 1939, just short of two years after his arrival in Spain, Brown returned home aboard the President Harding. Although the Spanish Republic had been defeated at the hands of Franco’s forces, Otto Brown’s time fighting against fascism was not yet over. He would be enlisted into the American army on March 10, 1942 and spend the next three years as a soldier in the Second World War.


Otto Brown died in November 1984, at 72 years old.

Sources

“Brown, Otto.” Sidbrint. Accessed May 1, 2026. https://sidbrint.ub.edu/brigadista/brown-otto.

The BIRLS Database. Accessed May 1, 2026. https://www.birls.org/.

“Blast from the Past: Artillery Series.” The Volunteer, February 11, 2018. https://albavolunteer.org/2015/07/blast-from-the-past-artillery-series/.

Eby, Cecil D. Comrades and Commissars: The Lincoln Battalion in the Spanish Civil War. University Park: Penn State Univ Press, 2013.