Meet Tahirah Lamont Brown – Fedex’s First AFrican American Woman Pilot

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Tahirah Lamont Brown made history in 2002 as the first African American women to fly as a FedEx Airbus captain. Brown’s dreams of becoming a pilot started in high school. Her first flight was from Long Island, New York to Greenwich, Connecticut with her dad in the passenger seat. She didn’t have any initial mentors and didn’t know who to ask for help. Her parents worried how she would manage in such a male oriented field with few black pilots. Determined, she worked two jobs to pay for college and flight school.

She also crossed paths with Bill Norwood, the first African American pilot at United Airlines. His mentorship led her to the Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals where she received guidance and scholarship funds to keep her going. After her early days of flight school in 1992 to her role today at FedEx, she worked as a flight instructor for several years after earning her pilot’s license and then as a pilot at Great Lakes Aviation.

Brown worked her way through the ranks, but believes she won’t feel like she’s “made it” in the aviation industry until she sees more pilots like her – woman and African Americans.  It’s important for her to give back to younger pilots the same way Bill Norwood did for her. As of 2020, 94 percent of the American aircraft pilots identified as white, with only 5.6 percent being women and less than one percent being Black women, making Tahirah’s accomplishment rare. She’s optimistic about the future though. Tahirah spends time mentoring other young women and African Americans to pursue their dream of flying through her involvement in Women in Aviation International and the Organization of Black Aerospace Professional. When she’s mentoring younger pilots, she tells them “to not allow negative attitudes affect you. We can be our biggest barriers at time. We have to overcome our own personal barriers to achieve our goals.”