Talk by Tuskegee Airman Roscoe C. Brown Rescheduled for March 4

Roscoe C. Brown, a captain and pilot in the U.S. Army Air Forces’ Tuskegee Airmen fighter group, will deliver a lecture at noon to 1:30 p.m. March 4, in the William Pitt Union’s Kurtzman Room.

The talk was originally scheduled for Feb. 9, but the University was closed because of a snowstorm.

Titled “Tuskegee Airmen: A Model for Excellence,” the event is sponsored by Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering, School of Education, Office of Public Affairs, and Office of Student Affairs in recognition of February’s Black History Month.

Brown commanded the 100th Fighter Squadron of the all-Black 332nd Fighter Group during World War II, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal with eight Oak Leaf Clusters, denoting multiple decorations. Brown is credited with being the first fighter pilot of the 15th Air Force—a massive Army Air Forces combat group operating in the Mediterranean—to shoot down a German jet fighter, and he has been honored by the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum in New York City for his outstanding leadership as squadron commander.

Born in Washington, D.C., in 1922, Brown joined the Army Air Forces in 1943 after graduating from Springfield College in Massachusetts. After returning from Europe in 1946, he enrolled at New York University and earned his master’s and PhD degrees in physical education in 1949 and 1951, respectively.

Brown has focused his professional life on resolving the policy and social problems facing urban schools through better school management and parental involvement. He currently directs the City University of New York’s Center for Urban Education Policy, which studies and analyzes these issues.

For more information, contact Terri Cook in the Swanson School’s Office of Diversity at 412-624-9842 or eodadmin@pitt.edu.

—Morgan Kelly