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Franklin Quimby Brown was born in Chicago, Illinois on 29 July 1862 and raised in greater Boston, Massachusetts. He was the son of George Thomson Brown and Anne Tilton Wildes Brown. At an early age, he joined the First Corps of Cadets of the Massachusetts Voluntary Militia, achieving the rank of brigadier sergeant. In 1892 Brown married Ida Prescott Bigelow Eldredge of Boston. He was employed by the East India Trading Company and traveled to Florida at the age of 29 to become president of the Florida Southern Railroad (FSR). At the time, he was the youngest active railroad president in the United States. Following FSR's merger with the Plant System, he served that corporation's railroad, steamship and hotel interests.

Prior to the Spanish-American War, Colonel Brown was active in Cuban affairs. At the request of President McKinley, Brown prepared a personal report on conditions in Cuba. He also helped to organize the First National Defence Congress, held in Tampa, Florida in 1896. The Congress sought to call attention to the defenseless military and naval conditions of the Florida seacoast.

With the U.S.'s declaration of war with Spain, Brown was appointed colonel of the Florida State Militia, which later joined the U.S. Army. Detailed to General Wade and Major General Shafter, Brown provided assistance in the selection of camp sites and the movement of troops and supplies to Cuba. He reported directly to President McKinley on matters of the railroad block in Tampa.

Following the war, Brown resumed his position as vice president in the Plant System. For a time he served as associate publisher, with Colonel Henry Watterston, of the Louisville Courier-Journal. He was also interested in Jacksonville and Tampa papers. In 1906, Brown transferred to New York, becoming a partner in the investment banking firm of Redmond & Company, becoming a senior partner in the firm four years later. In 1908, he was a presidential elector for William Howard Taft and associate treasurer of the Republican National Committee.

At the onset of World War I, Brown organized the National Security League and volunteered for active service. He was appointed chairman of the Finance Advisory Committee of the United States Railroad Association and received several commendations and awards from the American and European governments after the war. Brown retired as general partner of Redmond & Company in 1928, remaining active in numerous civic and philanthropic organizations. Franklin Q. Brown died on 6 November 1955 at the age of 93.

Dr. John O. Brown, M.D. was born in Colbert, Oklahoma to Edward D. Brown and Gala Hill of Texas. He spearheaded much of the activism that was associated with the civil rights movement in Dade County. His name is linked with Sit-ins, pickets, the Gibson vs. Board of Education suit and Miami’s role in the 1963 March on Washington.

Dr. Brown attended the University of Wisconsin - Madison and graduated in 1943. That same year, he married Marie Faulkner in Nashville, TN. They had four children (three boys and one girl). He later attended Meharry Medical School (a historically black Medical College) in Nashville and graduated from there in 1950. He completed his post-graduate work in Ophthalmology at the Veteran’s Administration Hospital at Tuskegee Institute, Alabama. After completing his formal education Dr. Brown moved to Miami in 1955 and opened his Ophthalmology practice in Liberty City the following year.

During WWII he was an Officer in the U.S. Army and first lieutenant in the all black 92nd Infantry Division nicknamed the Buffalo Soldiers. Dr. Brown was awarded a Purple Heart with an Oak Leaf Cluster for his heroic service in the Amo Po Valley and Apennines campaigns in Italy during the Second World War. The “Oak Leaf Cluster” indicates that a subsequent award was added to the initial decoration.

By the late 1950s he was head of the Miami Chapter of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE). He led marches to integrate lunch counters and public beaches. Many of these protests were patterned after the historic lunch counter sit-ins across the South. Dr. Brown was quoted saying that Miami was Jim Crow from top to bottom in the late 1950s and 1960s (The Miami Herald, 02/26/1995). One of his sons (John, Jr.) was among the black children who sued the Dade County Public School System (Gibson vs. Board of Education) to force desegregation of Public Schools (Edison High School). The case was settled in 1963, the same year Dr. Brown participated in the March on Washington. By then John, Jr. had graduated high school and gone away to Harvard University.

Dr. Brown was voted president- elect of the National Medical Association and took control as President in 1986. He was a life member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and member of the regional board of the National Council of Christians and Jews and he was a Director at Capital Bank along with being a Charter member of the Community Race Relations Board (CRB).