Andrew Brimmer

Andrew Felton Brimmer (born on September 13, 1926) is a noted economist, academic, and business leader who was the first African American to have served as a governor of the Federal Reserve System. Brimmer was born in Newellton in Tensas Parish, Louisiana, to a family of sharecroppers. He attended racially segregated schools and graduated from the former Tensas Rosenwald High School in St. Joseph, the Tensas Parish seat of government. He was a classmate of Emmitt Douglas, later the long-term president of the Louisiana NAACP. Tensas Rosenwald closed in 1970, when the parish public schools were desegregated. Thereafter, Brimmer served in the U.S. Army from 1945 to 1946. He then attended the University of Washington in Seattle, where he...