Flags in New York City began flying at half-staff Monday, in honor of Roscoe C. Brown. He died on Saturday, and was one of the last few Red Tail pilots, a subset of the Tuskegee Airmen. The Airmen were part of a grand experiment in racial integration that the Army reluctantly undertook.
As a Red Tail, Brown was a pioneer. He was one of the first black pilots in the Army Air Force. Back before Brown and his colleagues took pilot training, the common assumption among the U.S. military's higher-ups was that black people could not fly airplanes.