Roscoe Conkling Brown Jr. was one of the Tuskegee Airmen and a squadron commander of the 100th Fighter Squadron of the 332nd Fighter Group. He was appointed to this position in June 1945, which was after V-E Day. During combat, he served as a flight leader and operations officer only. He graduated from the Tuskegee Flight School on March 12, 1944 as member of class 44-C-SE and served in the U.S. Army Air Forces in Europe during World War II. During this period, Captain Brown shot down an advanced GermanMe 262jet fighter and a FW-190 fighter. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. Brown was born in Washington, D.C. in 1922. His father, Roscoe C. Brown Sr., was a dentist and an official in the United States Public Health Service who was born as George Brown and had changed his name to honor Roscoe Conkling, a strong supporter of the rights of African Americans during Reconstruction. His mother was the former Vivian Berry, a teacher. Prior to his wartime service, he graduated from Springfield College, Springfield, Massachusetts, where he was valedictorian of the Class of 1943. After the war, Captain Brown resumed his education. His doctoral dissertation was on exercise physiology and he became a professor at New York University and directed their Institute of Afro-American Affairs. He was President of Bronx Community College from 1977 to 1993 and then director for the Center for Education Policy at the City University of New York. In 1992, Brown received an honorary doctor of humanics degree from his alma mater, Springfield College. On March 29, 2007, Brown attended a ceremony in the U.S. Capitol rotunda, where he and the other Tuskegee Airmen collectively, not individually, were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in recognition of their service. He was also a member and past president of the 100 Black Men of AmericaNew York Chapter. and professor of Urban Education at the CUNY Graduate Center. Brown died on July 2, 2016 at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, N.Y. at the age of 94. He had resided in Riverdale in his latter years.
