"Wesley Anthony Brown" {April 3,1927-May 22,2012}

Wesley was born in Baltimore Maryland and grew up in Washington

DC,where his daddy delivered groceries and his mama worked in a dry cleaning shop.His great-grandparents were slaves.He was a 1944 Dunbar High School graduate and served in the Army reserves as a teenager.He grew up in a row house on Q Street near Logan Circle.Wesley was the first African American graduate of the Naval Academy in Annapolis and served 20 years in the Navy as a civic engineer.He helped design a water treatment facility in Cuba,roads across Liberia,and an air station in the Philppines and nuclear plant in Antarcitica.Regarding Annapolis,since is founding in 1845.Five other African American midshipmen had come before him;none had graduated.Most were force to resign from the academy because of a hostile racial climate.According to the 2005 book "Breaking the color Barrier"by naval historian Robert J.Schneller Jr.,Commander Brown was the victim of a hazing campaign orchestrated by Southern upperclassmen who sought his dismissal.Upon enrollment in 1945,Wesley endured racial epithets and ostracism from his classmates.A group of upperclassmen gave him so many demerits during his first term mostly for fabricated infracations or petty offenses that he was threatened with expulsion.Commander Brown once said in a later interview "I get asked that question often,Did you ever think about quitting?" "And i say "Every Single Day.' "When i came to the academy i learned that there were all kinds of prejudices against Jews,Catholics,even the Irish,"Commander Brown said in 2005 interview wth the Baltimore Sun.And i looked around and thought that these prejudices were instilled in them by their families,and they could not be blamed for feeling they did."Eventually,sympathetic upperclassmen came to his aide and helped guide Commander Brown's development as a future naval officer.Among them was his teammate,A Georgia peanut farmer's son named Jimmy Carter.On June,1949 Commander Brown was commissioned as a Navy officer,graduating 370th out of his class nearly 800.Many newspapers covered his graduation as a landmark achievement in military history.Commander Brown. saw it differently.I feel it is unfortunate the American people had not mature enough to accept an individual on the basis of his ability and not regard a person as an oddity because of his color," he told the New York times in 1949."My class standing shows that around here I am an average "Joe."Wesley retired from the Navy in 1969.In 2008,the Naval Academy dedicated its $50 million indoor track facility in Comander Brown honor.