Jesse LeRoy Brown (October 13, 1926 – December 4, 1950) was a United States Navy officer. He was the first African-American aviator to complete the United States Navy's basic flight training program (though not the first African-American Navy aviator), the first African-American naval officer killed in the Korean War, and a recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross.
Born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, to an impoverished family, Brown was avidly interested in aircraft from a young age. He graduated as salutatorian of his high school, notwithstanding its racial segregation, and later earned a degree from Ohio State University. Brown enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1946, becoming a midshipman. Brown earned his pilot wings on October 21, 1948, amid a flurry of press coverage. In January 1949 he was assigned to Fighter Squadron 32 (VF-32) aboard the aircraft carrier based at Naval Air Station Quonset Point.
At the outset of the Korean War, Leyte was ordered to the Korean Peninsula, arriving in October 1950. VF-32 flew F4U-4 Corsair fighters in support of United Nations forces. Brown, an ensign, had already flown 20 combat missions when his Corsair came under fire and crashed on a remote mountaintop on December 4, 1950, while supporting ground troops at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir. Brown died of his wounds despite the efforts of his wingman, Thomas J. Hudner Jr., who intentionally crashed his own aircraft nearby in a rescue attempt, for which he was awarded the Medal of Honor.
Brown's life in the segregated and desegregated U.S. military has been memorialized in books and film, including the 2022 film Devotion. The frigate was named in his honor.
Early life and education Brown was born on October 13, 1926, in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He was one of six children born to Julia Lindsey Brown, a schoolteacher, and John Brown, a grocery warehouse worker. He had four brothers, Marvin, William, Fletcher, and Lura, as well as an older sister known as Johnny. Brown's ancestry was African American, Chickasaw, and Choctaw. The family lived in a house without central heating or indoor plumbing so they relied on a fireplace for warmth. As a child, Jesse's brother William fell into this fireplace and was severely burned.
At the beginning of the Great Depression, John Brown lost his job and relocated the family to Palmer's Crossing, from Hattiesburg, where he worked at a turpentine factory until he was laid off in 1938. John Brown moved the family to Lux, Mississippi, where he worked as a sharecropper on a farm. During this time, Jesse Brown shared a bed with his brothers (as was common among many families) and attended a one-room school away. His parents were very strict about school attendance and homework, and Jesse Brown walked to school every day. The Browns also were committed Baptists and Jesse, William, and Julia Brown sang in the church choir. In his spare time, Brown also worked in the fields of the farm harvesting corn and cotton.
When Brown was six years old, his father took him to an air show. Brown gained an intense interest in flying from this experience, and afterward, was attracted to a dirt airfield near his home, which he visited frequently in spite of being chased away by a local mechanic.
At the age of thirteen, Brown took a job as a paperboy for the Pittsburgh Courier, a Black press paper, and developed a desire to pilot while reading in the newspaper about African-American aviators of the time including C. Alfred Anderson, Eugine Jacques Bullard, and Bessie Coleman. He also became an avid reader of Popular Aviation and the Chicago Defender, which he later said heavily influenced his desire to fly naval aircraft. In his childhood he was described as "serious, witty, unassuming, and very intelligent." In 1937, he wrote a letter to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in which he complained of the injustice of African-American pilots being kept out of the U.S. Army Air Corps, to which the White House responded with a letter saying that it appreciated the viewpoint.
Because the schools closer to his family were of lower quality, in 1939, Brown lived with his aunt and attended the segregated Eureka High School in Hattiesburg. He was a member of the basketball, football, and track and field teams and he was an excellent student, graduating as the salutatorian in 1944. During this time, Brown met his future wife, Daisy Pearl Nix.
Following graduation, Brown sought to enroll in a college outside of the South. His principal, Nathaniel Burger, advised he attend an all-Black college, as his brother Marvin Brown had done. But he enrolled at Ohio State University as his childhood role model, Jesse Owens, had done. Burger told Brown that only seven African Americans had graduated from the university that year, but Brown was determined to enroll, believing that he could compete well with white students.
Brown took several side jobs to save money for college, including waiting tables at the Holmes Club, a saloon for white U.S. Army soldiers. In this job, Brown was frequently the target of racist vitriol and abuse, but he persevered, earning () to pay for college. In the autumn of 1944, Brown left Mississippi on a segregated train for Columbus, Ohio, where he started at Ohio State.
Brown moved into an on-campus boarding house at 61 East Eleventh Avenue in the primarily Black neighborhood of the University District in Columbus. He majored in architectural engineering. Brown attempted several times to apply to the school's aviation program, but was denied because of his race. Brown joined the track and field team as well as the wrestling team, but soon dropped both for financial reasons. He took a job as a janitor at a local Lazarus department store and was hired by the Pennsylvania Railroad to load boxcars from 15:30 to midnight each day. In spite of this, he maintained top grades in his classes.
Although facing difficulties with academics and the institutional segregation in the city, Brown found that most of his fellow students were friendly toward him. Brown rarely returned to Mississippi during the school year, but in the summers he worked at Barnes Cleaners (dry cleaner) owned by Milton L Barnes Sr. in Hattiesburg to help pay for his classes.
During his second year in college, Brown learned of the V-5 Aviation Cadet Training Program being conducted by the U.S. Navy to commission naval aviation pilots. This program operated at 52 colleges, none of which was a historically Black college, so only students such as Brown, who attended integrated colleges, were eligible. In spite of resistance from recruiters, Brown passed the entrance exams.
Brown enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve on July 8, 1946 and was admitted to the aviation program, becoming a Seaman Apprentice in the U.S. Navy and a member of the school's Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (NROTC) program. A $50 monthly stipend () allowed him to quit his jobs and concentrate on his studies; he completed his architectural engineering degree in 1947. At this time, the NROTC was the normal route to a regular Naval commission, but only 14 of the more than 5,600 NROTC students in 1947 were Black.
Career On March 15, 1947, Brown reported to Naval Air Station Glenview in Glenview, Illinois, for Student Naval Aviator training. There, his enlistment ended April 15 and Brown was appointed to the rank of midshipman, becoming the only African American in the program. Although he anticipated antagonism, he found the other cadets were generally friendly and welcoming. He found many of the Black cooks and janitors hostile to him, however, possibly due to jealousy. Brown got his first flight time aboard a Stearman N2S trainer aircraft.
In spite of the rigors of the initial training, Brown was encouraged by instructors and completed the first phase of training, transferring to Naval Air Station Ottumwa in Ottumwa, Iowa, for the next phase. The Ottumwa training involved intense physical fitness and technical training, which Brown completed. Thereafter, he was moved to Naval Air Station Pensacola in Pensacola, Florida, to train in aircraft.
In Pensacola, Brown and Nix married in secret, as naval cadets were not allowed to marry until their training was complete, under threat of immediate dismissal. Nix took a room in Pensacola, and the two visited one another on weekends. In spite of overt racism from at least one instructor and several classmates at this posting, Brown completed the rigorous training in August 1947.
By June 1948, Brown had begun training for carrier-based aircraft and hoped to fly either the F4U Corsair or F6F Hellcat, both of which were fighters. He trained in carrier takeoffs and landings aboard the light carrier , after which he was sent to Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Florida, for final flight qualifications. On October 21, 1948, he completed his training and was awarded his Naval Aviator Badge and designation as a Naval Aviator. This accomplishment was widely publicized, and Brown became known nationally. The Associated Press profiled him and his photograph appeared in Life magazine. Author Theodore Taylor later wrote that through Brown's efforts to become a pilot, he had broken the "color barrier" which had been longstanding at preventing Black people in Naval Aviation.
Brown was commissioned as an ensign in the U.S. Navy on April 26, 1949. He was assigned to Naval Air Station Quonset Point at Quonset Point, Rhode Island, as a part of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet. Brown reported that incidents of racism and discrimination, which had been harsh late in his training, were substantially relieved once he became an officer. Following his commissioning, Brown was assigned to temporary duty at Naval Air Station Norfolk in Norfolk, Virginia. His daughter, Pamela Elise Brown, was born in December. In January 1949, Brown was assigned to Fighter Squadron 32 aboard . Over the next 18 months, the unit conducted numerous training exercises along the East Coast, many of them taking place at Quonset Point. Brown reported here his superiors treated him fairly and held others to equal standards. The unit trained rigorously in aircraft maneuvers.
By the outbreak of the Korean War, he had gained a reputation among the others in the squadron as an experienced pilot and a capable section leader. He was well-liked among other pilots and the Black stewards and support staff of the carrier. Brown did not socialize much with the other pilots, however, and was known to spend as much time as possible visiting his wife. He was able to reveal his marriage following his commissioning.
Korean War
On the night of June 25, 1950, ten North Korean and Korean ethnic Chinese infantry divisions launched a full-scale invasion of the nation's neighbor to the south, the Republic of Korea. The force of 89,000 men moved in six columns, catching the Republic of Korea Army by surprise, resulting in a rout. The smaller South Korean army suffered from widespread lack of organization and equipment, and was unprepared for war. The numerically superior North Korean forces destroyed isolated resistance from the 38,000 South Korean soldiers on the front before it began moving steadily south. Most of South Korea's forces retreated in the face of the invasion. The North Koreans were well on their way to South Korea's capital of Seoul within hours, forcing the government and its shattered army to retreat farther south.