Harry Braverman was born on December 9, 1920, in Brooklyn, New York, to Jewish Polish parents, Morris and Sarah (Wolf) Braverman. His father, a shoe worker, tried to provide his son with a college education, but after one year at Brooklyn College, Braverman was forced to withdraw and find employment. He would not return to college until the 1960s, earning his bachelor of arts degree from the New School for Social Research in 1963. Nonetheless, the short time he did spend as a young college student greatly influenced him as the radical ideas of socialism and Marxism were spreading through New York's college campuses. Braverman found an ideological home with the Young People's Socialist League.

Merely 16 years old, Braverman went to work at the Brooklyn Naval Yards as a coppersmith apprentice. During his four years on the docks, Braverman also mastered steel-fabrication layout, refitting the asbestos-covered pipes of docked ships (an...