Sam W. Brown Jr. was born July 27, 1943, in Council Bluffs, Iowa. He attended Abraham Lincoln High School in Council Bluffs. Brown attended the University of Redlands in California, Brown received a B.A. from the University of Redlands in 1965, an M.A. from Rutgers University in 1966, pursued graduate studies at Harvard University Divinity School from 1966–1968, and was a Fellow at the John F. Kennedy Institute of Politics, Harvard University, in 1969.