World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseRoscoe Conkling Brown, Jr. was born in Washington DC, United States in 1922. His father Roscoe C. Brown, Sr. was a dentist and an official in the US Public Health Service, and his mother Vivian Kemp was a teacher. He graduated as the valedictorian of Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts, United States in 1943 and joined the US Army. He graduated from the Tuskegee Flight School at the historically black Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, United States in Mar 1944. On 24 Mar 1945, while flying a mission to Berlin, Germany, he shot down a German Me 262 jet fighter, becoming the first USAAF 15th Air Force pilot to shoot down a jet. For his successes during WW2, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross medal. After the war, he obtained a doctor of philosophy degree in exercise physiology from New York University (NYU) in New York, New York, United States. Remaining in NYU, he first served as a professor, and later took on the duty as the director of the NYU Institute of Afro-American Affairs. Between 1977 and 1993, he was the President of Bronx Community College. He then served as the director for the Center for Education Policy at the City University of New York. In 2007, he attended the ceremony at the US Capitol rotunda in Washington DC, United States during which the Tuskegee airmen were collectively awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. Brown passed away at the Montefiore Medical Center in Bronx in 2016. He was buried at the Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, United States.

Roscoe Brown Interactive Map

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Roscoe Brown Timeline