On March 3, 2018, Francisco Gonzalez, Board President of the The John C. Robinson Aviation Museum – Brown Condor Association, was asked by Ethiopian Heritage Society in North America to speak about Robinson in Washington D.C. He was presented with a special plaque commemorating the great pilot’s life. It was then placed next to his bust in the Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport.

Thomas E. Simmons penned The Man Called Brown Condor, the biography of John Charles Robinson, known in the media of the 1930s as The Brown Condor of Ethiopia. This is the true story of Robinson’s struggles to overcome the racial prejudice that all but closed the field of aviation to Blacks. His outstanding success in accomplishing his dream of flying, his influence toward the establishment of a school of aviation at Tuskegee Institute (there would have been no Tuskegee Airmen without him) and his courageous wartime service in Ethiopia during the Italian invasion in 1935 are brought to life.

It was during Robinson’s service to Ethiopia that he took to the air in opposition to the first Fascist invasion of what would become World War II. This remarkable American Hero may have been the first American to oppose Fascism in combat.