24 Facts About Ron Brown

Ron Brown served as the United States Secretary of Commerce during the first term of President Bill Clinton.

Ron Brown was the first African American to hold these positions.

Ron Brown was killed, along with 34 others, in a 1996 plane crash in Croatia.

Ron Brown was born in Washington, DC, and was raised in Harlem, New York, in a middle-class family.

Ron Brown was a member of an African-American social and philanthropic organization, Jack and Jill of America.

Ron Brown's father managed the Theresa Hotel in Harlem where Brown and his family lived.

Ron Brown's best friend John R Nailor moved into the penthouse while he was a student at Rhodes.

Ron 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.

Ron Brown then joined the National Urban League, a leading economic equality group in the United States.

Meanwhile, Ron Brown enrolled at St John's University School of Law and obtained a degree in 1970.

Ron Brown was hired in 1981 by the Washington, DC, law firm Patton Boggs as a lawyer and a lobbyist.

In May 1988, Brown was named by Jesse L Jackson to head Jackson's convention team at the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta.

Ron Brown was named along with several other experienced party insiders to Jackson's convention operation.

In 1982, Ron Brown was named deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

Ron Brown refused to drop the Duvaliers despite being criticized for representing such unsavory clients.

Ron Brown was elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee on February 10,1989, becoming the first African American chosen to lead a major US political party.

Ron Brown later played an integral role in running a successful 1992 Democratic National Convention and in Bill Clinton's successful 1992 presidential run.

Ron Brown led delegations of entrepreneurs, businessmen 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.

Ron Brown was leading a trade mission en route to Croatia when all passengers died in a plane crash.

In 1993, Ron Brown was alleged to have accepted $700,000 from Vietnamese businessmen Nguyen Van Hao so that Ron Brown would lift the embargo against Vietnam.

Speculation about the crash included many government cover-up and conspiracy theories, largely based on Ron Brown having been under investigation by independent counsel for corruption.

Ron Brown carried an offer for normalizing relations between the United States and the former communist enemy.

On January 8,2001, Brown was presented, posthumously, with the Presidential Citizens Medal by President Bill Clinton, twelve days before George W Bush took office.

Ron Brown lost his re-election campaign in 2012 and later pleaded guilty to the charge of accepting a bribe from undercover agents.