BLACK HISTORY SPOTLIGHT: RON BROWN

RON BROWN (1941-1996) was a businessman and politician who was the first black person to serve as chairman of a national political party and the first black Secretary of Commerce.

Brown was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in a middle-class family in Harlem, New York. As a child, he appeared in an advertisement for Pepsi-Cola, one of the first to be targeted specifically towards the African-American community. He was a member of JACK AND JILL OF AMERICA and attended Hunter College Elementary School and Rhodes Preparatory School.

He attended Middlebury College, a private liberal arts college in Vermont, and became the first black member of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity. He joined the army in 1962 after graduating and married the former Alma Arrington. After being discharged five years later, Brown worked as a welfare caseworker for the City of New York then theNATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE and attended law school classes at night at St. John’s University.

In 1980, he worked on Sen. Edward Kennedy’s presidential campaign and was soon appointed chief counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee. The next year he joined one of the nation’s top law firms, Patton, Boggs & Blow, as its first black partner. He continued to be active in politics and served as JESSE JACKSON’s convention manager in his 1988 presidential bid.

As Chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 1989 to 1992, Brown reunited the Party after its defeat in the 1988 election and led it to victory in 1992. This earned him a cabinet-level appointment in Pres. Bill Clinton’s administration as Secretary of Commerce; he is widely credited with revitalizing the department.

A tireless advocate for American business at home and abroad, Brown circled the globe spreading good will with his characteristic enthusiasm and cultivated opportunities and markets for American products. In 1996, Brown and 34 others were killed when their plane crashed during stormy weather on a three-day economic tour of the Balkans for the Department of Commerce. In December of that same year, the RON BROWN SCHOLAR PROGRAM was established.