Texan sworn in as first African American to lead Air Force
Growing up in San Antonio, Charles Quinton Brown was quiet, studious and serious about the future.
“During his school years, you never one time had to say, ‘Would you do your homework? ’ ” said his mother, Kay Tanner Brown. “It was automatic. He always studied hard.”
As three generations of Browns stood Thursday in a hangar at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, it was clear how far the studious one had come.
Now a decorated four-star general, Brown was installed as the Air Force chief of staff, becoming the first African American to hold the job.
“I’m in awe that I’m even standing here as the 22nd Air Force chief of staff considering that I had only planned to stay in the Air Force four years and almost quit ROTC after my first semester,” Brown, 57, said after taking command, two days after President Donald Trump swore him in at the Oval Office. “Yet, here I am in a position that I never thought imaginable.”
Brown, known as CQ, was raised in a military family and spent some of his youth in San Antonio. His appointment to the top Pentagon post signifies a new era of leadership that was out of reach for his late grandfather and father, whose military careers were more limited by the segregated society of their time.
His grandfather, Robert E. Brown Jr., served in an all-Black unit in the Pacific during World War II. He worked for a family and had side jobs preparing taxes and serving as a notary, even though he only made it through the eighth grade.
His parents, Charles and Kay Brown, grew up in San Antonio in the 1950s, when Blacks rode in the back of the bus and entered movie theaters through the back door.
While earning a bachelor’s in accounting at St. Mary’s University, the elder Brown said he was passed over for internships by big companies like Arthur Andersen.
An ROTC student, he had a twoyear military commitment after graduating, but knew his best bet was to make it a career, retiring as a colonel after 30 years in the Army.
Charles Brown was the second Black officer commissioned in St. Mary’s ROTC program. His brother, Robert, was the first.
“I said something to my brother not too long ago,” Charles Brown said. “I graduated from high school in 1959, and when I look back and see the things that happened during the time I was in high school and college, and even early in my military career, to see the things that transpired, and I look back sometimes and say, ‘Man, look how far we have come.’ But on the flip side of that, I can also say, ‘Look how far we have to go.’ ”