Interview with Desmond Brown, June 26, 2014

Interview Summary

Desmond Brown (from Sierra Leone) talks about growing up in the mountain village of Gloucester above Freetown where he helped his grandmother grow and market vegetables. He attended primary school there and then moved to Freetown to live with his mother and attend a top secondary school. After passing both O and A level exams he became interested in tourism while working for British Caledonian Airlines. The desire to pursue tourism and business brought him to the US in 1981. He got his BA at Morgan State and his MA at George Washington University. After working in hotel management in Connecticut and later in Atlanta, he tried teaching at Georgia State which led him to pursue a PhD at Virginia Tech. He came to the University of Kentucky in 1995 and is Associate Professor in the Retailing and Tourism Management Department in the College of Agriculture. A U.S. citizen, he spent a semester on a Fulbright Scholarship in Ghana in 2003.

Interview Keyword

Creole Fourah Bay University Freetown, Sierra Leone Gloucester Grammar school Secondary school Sierra Leone Villages Ghana. Childhood Families. Race discrimination Culture and customs of North America

Interview LC Subject

Tourism University of Kentucky Emigration and immigration. Higher education Teachers Immigrants Assimilation (Sociology) Identity Tourism--Kentucky Teaching

Interview Rights

All rights to the interviews, including but not restricted to legal title, copyrights and literary property rights, have been transferred to the University of Kentucky Libraries.

Interview Usage

Interviews may be reproduced with permission from Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, Special Collections, University of Kentucky Libraries.