Jesse L. Brown

Brown's life in the segregated and desegregated U.S. military has been memorialized in books and film, including the 2022 film Devotion. The frigate USS Jesse L. Brown (FF-1089) was named in his honor.

Brown is portrayed in the 2022 film Devotion by Jonathan Majors.

In July 2013, Hudner visited Pyongyang in an attempt to recover Brown's remains from the crash site. He was told by North Korean authorities to return in September when the weather would be more predictable.

In 1998, Theodore Taylor wrote a biography titled Flight of Jesse Leroy Brown, interviewing Brown's acquaintances and with reference to his personal letters. In 2011 a traveling exhibit, "A Pilot Lights the Way" was featured in the 100th Anniversary of Naval Aviation exhibit at the National Museum of Naval Aviation, the curator was author and poet, Valada Flewellyn. The "A Pilot Light the Way" exhibit opened at the University of Central Florida (UCF) and traveled to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and other locations. In 2015, Brown was the subject of the biography Devotion: An Epic Story of Heroism, Friendship, and Sacrifice, by Adam Makos.

On 17 February 1973, the Navy commissioned the Knox-class frigate USS Jesse L. Brown (FF-1089), the third U.S. ship named in honor of an African American. Present at the commissioning ceremony in Boston, Massachusetts, were Daisy Brown Thorne (who had remarried), Pamela Brown, and Hudner, who gave a dedication. The ship was decommissioned on 27 July 1994 and renamed Damiyat after being commissioned with the Egyptian Navy.

Brown's shipmates memorialized him in a shipwide newspaper as "a Christian soldier, a gentleman, a shipmate, and friend ... His courage and faith ... shone like a beacon for all to see." As word of his death spread, Brown inspired numerous other African Americans to become pilots, notably Seaman Apprentice Frank E. Petersen. Petersen would become the first African-American Marine Corps aviator and the first African-American Marine Corps general, graduating from the Naval Aviation Training Program in 1952 and retiring from the military after 38 years in 1988 with the rank of lieutenant general.

At the outset of the Korean War, Leyte was ordered to the Korean Peninsula, arriving in October 1950. During the Korean War, VF-32 flew F4U-4 Corsair fighters in support of United Nations forces. Brown, an ensign, had already flown 20 combat missions when his Corsair came under fire and crashed on a remote mountaintop on December 4, 1950, while supporting ground troops at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir. Brown died of his wounds despite the efforts of his wingman, Thomas J. Hudner Jr., who intentionally crashed his own aircraft nearby in a rescue attempt, for which he was awarded the Medal of Honor.

On the night of 25 June 1950, ten North Korean and Korean ethnic Chinese infantry divisions launched a full-scale invasion of the nation's neighbor to the south, the Republic of Korea. The force of 89,000 men moved in six columns, catching the Republic of Korea Army by surprise, resulting in a rout. The smaller South Korean army suffered from widespread lack of organization and equipment, and was unprepared for war. The numerically superior North Korean forces destroyed isolated resistance from the 38,000 South Korean soldiers on the front before it began moving steadily south. Most of South Korea's forces retreated in the face of the invasion. The North Koreans were well on their way to South Korea's capital of Seoul within hours, forcing the government and its shattered army to retreat farther south.

Following the entrance of the People's Republic of China into the war in October 1950, Brown and his squadron were dispatched to the Chosin Reservoir, where an intense campaign was being fought between X Corps (United States) and the People's Volunteer Army’s 9th Army. Approximately 100,000 Chinese troops had surrounded 15,000 U.S. troops, and Brown and other pilots on Leyte flew dozens of close air support missions every day to prevent the Chinese from overrunning the U.S. troops.

On 4 December 1950, Brown was part of a six-aircraft flight supporting U.S. Marine Corps ground troops trapped by Chinese forces. At 13:38 KST, Brown took off from Leyte with squadron executive officer Lieutenant Commander Dick Cevoli, Lieutenant George Hudson, Lieutenant Junior Grade Bill Koenig, Ensign Ralph E. McQueen, and Lieutenant Junior Grade Thomas J. Hudner Jr., who was Brown's wingman. During this flight, Brown had the call sign "Iroquois 13". The flight traveled 100 miles (160 km) from the Task Force's location to the Chosin Reservoir, flying 35 to 40 minutes through very harsh wintery conditions to the vicinity of the villages of Yudam-ni and Hagaru-ri. The flight began searching for targets along the west side of the reservoir, decreasing their altitude to 700 feet (210 m). The mission was a three-hour search and destroy flight as well as an attempt to probe Chinese troop strength in the area.

Brown was commissioned as an ensign in the U.S. Navy on 26 April 1949. He was assigned to Naval Air Station Quonset Point at Quonset Point, Rhode Island, as a part of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet. Brown reported that incidents of racism and discrimination, which had been harsh late in his training, were substantially relieved once he became an officer. Following his commissioning, Brown was assigned to temporary duty at Norfolk Naval Air Station in Norfolk, Virginia. His daughter, Pamela Elise Brown, was born in December. In January 1949, Brown was assigned to Fighter Squadron 32 aboard USS Leyte. Over the next 18 months, the unit conducted numerous training exercises along the East Coast, many of them taking place at Quonset Point. Brown reported here his superiors treated him fairly and held others to equal standards. The unit trained rigorously in aircraft maneuvers.

Born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, to an impoverished family, Brown was avidly interested in aircraft from a young age. He graduated as salutatorian of his high school, notwithstanding its racial segregation, and later earned a degree from Ohio State University. Brown enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1946, becoming a midshipman. Brown earned his pilot wings on October 21, 1948 amid a flurry of press coverage; in January 1949 he was assigned to Fighter Squadron 32 (VF-32) aboard the aircraft carrier USS Leyte.

By June 1948, Brown had begun training for carrier-based aircraft, and hoped to fly either the F4U Corsair or F6F Hellcat, both of which were fighters. He trained in carrier takeoffs and landings aboard the light carrier USS Wright, after which he was sent to Jacksonville, Florida, for final flight qualifications. On 21 October 1948, he completed his training and was given his Naval Aviator Badge. This accomplishment was widely publicized, and Brown became known nationally. The Associated Press profiled him and his photograph appeared in Life magazine. Author Theodore Taylor later wrote that through Brown's efforts to become a pilot, he had broken the "color barrier" which had been longstanding and preventing blacks in naval aviation.

On 15 March 1947, Brown reported to Glenview Naval Air Station in Glenview, Illinois, for Naval Flight Officer training. There, his enlistment ended 15 April and Brown reverted to the rank of midshipman, becoming the only African American in the program. Although he anticipated antagonism, he found the other cadets were generally friendly and welcoming. He found many of the black cooks and janitors hostile to him, however, possibly due to jealousy. Brown got his first flight time aboard a Stearman N2S trainer aircraft.

In Pensacola, Brown and Nix married in secret, as naval cadets were not allowed to marry until their training was complete, under threat of immediate dismissal. Nix took a room in Pensacola, and the two visited one another on weekends. In spite of overt racism from at least one instructor and several classmates at this posting, Brown completed the rigorous training in August 1947.

Brown enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve on 8 July 1946 and was admitted to the aviation program, becoming a Seaman Apprentice in the U.S. Navy and a member of the school's Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (NROTC) program. A $50 monthly stipend allowed him to quit his jobs and concentrate on his studies; he completed his architectural engineering degree in 1947. At this time, the NROTC was the normal route to a regular Naval commission, but only 14 of the more than 5,600 NROTC students in 1947 were black.

Brown took several side jobs to save money for college, including waiting tables at the Holmes Club, a saloon for white U.S. Army soldiers. In this job, Brown was frequently the target of racist vitriol and abuse, but he persevered, earning $600 to pay for college. In the autumn of 1944, Brown left Mississippi on a segregated train for Columbus, Ohio, where he started at Ohio State.

While Brown is often cited as the first African-American Naval Aviator, historian Robert J. Schneller has maintained that Lieutenant (junior grade) Oscar W. Holmes preceded Brown, earning the designation of Naval Aviator in 1943 with an exemption from the Navy's basic aviation training program due to his prior civilian piloting experience.

Because the schools closer to his family were of lower quality, in 1939, Brown lived with his aunt and attended the segregated Eureka High School in Hattiesburg. He was a member of the basketball, football, and track and field teams and he was an excellent student, graduating as the salutatorian in 1944 . During this time, Brown met his future wife, Daisy Pearl Nix.

At the beginning of the Great Depression, John Brown lost his job and relocated the family to Palmer's Crossing, 10 miles (16 km) from Hattiesburg, where he worked at a turpentine factory until he was laid off in 1938. John Brown moved the family to Lux, Mississippi, where he worked as a sharecropper on a farm. During this time, Jesse Brown shared a bed with his brothers (as was common among many families) and attended a one-room school 3 miles (4.8 km) away. His parents were very strict about school attendance and homework, and Jesse Brown walked to school every day. The Browns also were committed Baptists and Jesse, William, and Julia Brown sang in the church choir. In his spare time, Brown also worked in the fields of the farm harvesting corn and cotton.

At the age of thirteen, Brown took a job as a paperboy for the Pittsburgh Courier, a black press paper, and developed a desire to pilot while reading in the newspaper about African-American aviators of the time including C. Alfred Anderson, Eugine Jacques Bullard, and Bessie Coleman. He also became an avid reader of Popular Aviation and the Chicago Defender, which he later said heavily influenced his desire to fly naval aircraft. In his childhood he was described as "serious, witty, unassuming, and very intelligent." In 1937, he wrote a letter to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in which he complained of the injustice of African-American pilots being kept out of the U.S. Army Air Corps, to which the White House responded with a letter saying that it appreciated the viewpoint.

Jesse LeRoy Brown (October 13, 1926 – December 4, 1950) was a United States Navy officer. He was the first African-American aviator to complete the U.S. Navy's basic flight training program, was a recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross, and the first African-American naval officer killed in the Korean War.

Brown was born on 13 October 1926 in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He was one of six children born to Julia Lindsey Brown, a schoolteacher, and John Brown, a grocery warehouse worker. He had four brothers, Marvin, William, Fletcher, and Lura, as well as an older sister known as Johnny. Brown's ancestry was African American, Chickasaw, and Choctaw. The family lived in a house without central heating or indoor plumbing so they relied on a fireplace for warmth. As a child, Jesse's brother William fell into this fireplace and was severely burned.