Andrew Brimmer

Brimmer being sworn in as a member of the Federal Reserve Board by William McChesney Martin in 1966. U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson and Brimmer's wife and daughter, Esther, look on.

Andrew Felton Brimmer (September 13, 1926 – October 7, 2012) was an American economist and business leader who served as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors from 1966 to 1974. A member of the Democratic Party, Brimmer was the first African American to sit on the Board. He attended racially segregated schools and graduated from the former Tensas Rosenwald High School in St. Joseph, the seat of government of Tensas Parish. 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. The formerly all-white Newellton High School then functioned as a desegregated institution from 1970 until its closing because of low enrollment in 2006.

Brimmer served in the United States Army from 1945 to 1946. He attended the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, where he obtained both his bachelor's and master's degrees. In 1951, Brimmer received a Fulbright scholarship to study in India, and enrolled in 1952 in Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where in 1957, he received his Ph.D.

Awards and honors Named government man of the year by the National Business League, 1963 Arthur S. Flemming Award, 1966 Russwurm Award, 1966 Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement, 1967 Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1970 National Urban League Equal Opportunity Award, 1974 Horatio Alger Award, 1974 Elected to the American Philosophical Society, 1976. Fulbright 40th Anniversary Distinguished Lecturer, Ghana and Nigeria, 1986 Samuel Z. Westerfield Award, the highest award given by the National Economic Association, 1990, "in recognition of distinguished service, outstanding scholarship, and achievement of high standards of excellence" Black Enterprise A.G. Gaston Lifetime Achievement Award, 2007 In 2020, the American Economic Association announced the establishment of the "Andrew Brimmer Undergraduate Essay Prize," to be presented to an undergraduate student at a U.S. based institution of higher learning majoring in economics, political science, public policy, or related fields for the best essay on the “economic well-being of Black Americans.”

Personal life and death Brimmer married the former Doris Millicent Scott. They had a daughter, Esther Dianne Brimmer. Her son, Brimmer's grandson, is playwright Nathaniel Brimmer-Beller.

Brimmer died on October 7, 2012, at George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C.