Pat Brown
32nd governor of California from 1959 to 1967
Edmund Gerald "Pat" Brown (April 21, 1905 – February 16, 1996) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 32nd governor of California from 1959 to 1967. His first elected office was district attorney of San Francisco, and he was later elected attorney general of California in 1950, before becoming the state's governor after the 1958 election.
Born in San Francisco, Brown had an early interest in speaking and politics. He skipped college and earned an LL.B. law degree in 1927. In his first term as governor, Brown delivered on major legislation, including a tax increase and the California Master Plan for Higher Education. The California State Water Project was a major and highly complex achievement. He also pushed through civil-rights legislation. In a second term, troubles mounted, including the defeat of a fair housing law (1964 California Proposition 14), the 1960s Berkeley protests, the Watts riots, and internal battles among Democrats over support or opposition to the Vietnam War. He lost the 1966 California gubernatorial election for a third term to future president Ronald Reagan; his legacy has since earned him regard as the builder of modern California.
His son Jerry Brown was the 34th and 39th governor of California, as well as the 31st attorney general of California, holding two offices he once held.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Pat Brown” as 32nd governor of California from 1959 to 1967. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q724121. VIAF identifies the subject as 110786704. The Library of Congress control number is n82079368. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1905, 1996, 1959 and 1967.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pat Brown” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.