Robert S. Browne, 79; Founded, Led Black Endowed Foundation

Robert S. Browne, 79, the founder and chairman of the Twenty-First Century Foundation, one of the few black endowed foundations in the country, died Aug. 5 of heart failure at a hospital in West Haverstraw, N.Y.

The Chicago native earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Illinois and an MBA at the University of Chicago. He served in the Army Air Forces during World War II. After the war, he began his career teaching at Dillard University in New Orleans. He later served as the industrial field secretary for the Chicago Urban League from 1950 to 1952.

In the late 1950s and ‘60s, he held positions with the U.S. Agency for International Development in Cambodia and South Vietnam. In 1966, he took an antiwar stance and ran as an independent candidate for the U.S. Senate from New Jersey.

Browne founded the Black Economic Research Center in 1969. Two years later, he founded the Emergency Land Fund, a loan source for black farmers in the South, and the Twenty-First Century Foundation.

He served as executive director of the African Development Bank in Ivory Coast from 1980 to 1982 and as chief economic advisor to presidential candidate Jesse Jackson in 1984. From 1986 to 1991, he was staff director of the House Subcommittee on International Development Institutions.