On 21 October 1948, at the age of 22, Brown became the first African American man to complete Navy flight training. He received orders to Selective Flight Training in Glenview, Illinois, in March 1947, followed by additional training at Naval Air Station Ottumwa and Naval Air Station Pensacola. Despite his excellent performance and acceptance into the program, Brown told his friend, “I’m not sure the Navy really wants me.” He wrote to a childhood friend that he had made it through five hours of written tests, followed by oral tests and a rigorous physical exam ─ making it through each round of eliminations with flying colors. He persisted and was finally permitted to take the qualification exams. When he left Mississippi to attend Ohio State University in 1944, his high school principal wrote to him, “As the first of our graduates to enter a predominately white university, you are our hero.” Even though Brown had to work the midnight shift loading boxcars for the Pennsylvania Railroad to earn money for his education, he was still able to maintain a high GPA.īrown joined the Naval Reserve to help pay for college. After he saw a poster recruiting students for a new naval aviation program, he was discouraged from applying and was told he would never make it to the cockpit of a Navy aircraft.
He was a school athlete who excelled at math and dreamed of being a pilot from the time he was a young boy.
Jesse Leroy Brown was born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, into a sharecropper family.
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