Ronald Harmon Brown (August 1, 1941 – April 3, 1996) was an American politician and lobbyist who served as the 30th United States secretary of commerce during the first term of President Bill Clinton. Before this, he was chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). He was the first African American to hold these positions. He was killed, along with 34 others, in a 1996 plane crash in Croatia.
Early life Ron Brown was born in Washington, D.C., and was raised in Harlem, New York, in a middle-class family. He was a member of an African-American social and philanthropic organization, Jack and Jill of America. Brown attended Hunter College Elementary School and Rhodes Preparatory School. His father managed the Theresa Hotel in Harlem, where Brown and his family lived. His best friend, John R. Nailor, moved into the penthouse while he was a student at Rhodes. Nailor was one of the other few black students who attended Rhodes Prep. As a child, Brown appeared in an advertisement for Pepsi-Cola (renamed to Pepsi in 1961), one of the first to be targeted specifically towards the African-American community.
Military career While at Middlebury College, Ron Brown became the first African-American member of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity, of which he served as secretary his junior and senior years. Brown was commissioned through the ROTC program as a 2nd Lieutenant of Armor in the United States Army in 1962 after graduating from Middlebury, the same year he married Alma Arrington. After tours of duty in Germany and California, deploying temporarily to Korea, he left the United States Army as a captain in 1967. Brown then joined the National Urban League, a leading economic equality group in the United States. Meanwhile, Brown enrolled at St. John's University School of Law and obtained a degree in 1970.
Rise in the Democratic Party By 1976, Brown had been promoted to Deputy Executive Director for Programs and Governmental Affairs of the National Urban League. However, he resigned in 1979 to work as a deputy campaign manager for the Ted Kennedy 1980 presidential campaign. Brown was hired in 1981 by the Washington, D.C., law firm Patton Boggs as a lawyer and a lobbyist. In May 1988, Brown was named by Jesse Jackson to head Jackson's convention team at the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta. Brown and several other experienced party insiders were named to Jackson's convention operation. By June, Brown was running Jackson's campaign.
Democratic National Committee In 1982, Brown was named deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee. That same year, he began lobbying the U.S. government on behalf of the brutal Duvalier regime, which was then in power in Haiti. Over the next four years, Brown earned $630,000, helping to persuade the Administration to continue aid to the government of dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier. Brown refused to drop the Duvaliers despite being criticized for representing such unsavory clients. Brown was elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee on February 10, 1989, becoming the first African American chosen to lead a major U.S. political party. He later played an integral role in running a successful 1992 Democratic National Convention and in Bill Clinton's successful campaign in the 1992 presidential election.
Secretary of Commerce
President Clinton appointed Brown to be the United States secretary of commerce in 1993. He led delegations of entrepreneurs, business people, and financiers to South Africa, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, Egypt, Russia, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Ireland, India, and Senegal. Brown was involved in the Commerce Department trade mission controversy during his tenure.
Criticism During the Nannygate scandal, Brown admitted that he had failed to pay taxes for his maid, who was an illegal immigrant. In 1993, Brown was alleged to have accepted $700,000 from Vietnamese businessman Nguyen Van Hao so that Brown would lift the embargo against Vietnam. In 1996, before Brown's trade mission, he sold seats on the plane used for the mission to raise funds for Bill Clinton's reelection campaign.
Death
On April 3, 1996, when Brown was on an official trade mission, a U.S. Air Force CT-43 (a modified Boeing 737) carrying Brown and 34 other people, including New York Times Frankfurt Bureau chief Nathaniel C. Nash, crashed into a mountainside on approach to Croatia's Dubrovnik Airport. The Air Force attributed the crash to pilot error and a poorly designed landing approach. Speculation about the crash included many government cover-up and conspiracy theories, largely based on Brown having been under investigation by independent counsel for corruption. Of specific concern was a trip Brown had made to Vietnam on behalf of the Clinton Administration. Brown carried an offer for normalizing relations between the United States and the former communist enemy.
Some people, including Kweisi Mfume—head of the NAACP at the time—and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, had written federal officials to ask for more data on the suspicious circumstances of Brown's death:"Responding to homicide allegations, an official of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology acknowledged that doctors initially were puzzled by a circular wound on the top of Brown's head when his remains were recovered at the crash scene. The forensic pathologist then consulted with others and took extensive X-rays. As a result of these consultations and full-body X-rays, we absolutely ruled out anything beyond a blunt-force injury to the head."Brown was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Honors and legacy
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