Honoring Percy Brown, one of Baltimore’s first African American Bus Operators.

We honor the service of Mr. Percy Brown, who recently passed away after having left to the MTA and its customers a legacy of dedication and innovation that will be long remembered.

Mr. Brown helped shape history in 1952 as one of Baltimore’s first African American bus operators, a position he earned only after overcoming numerous hurdles. He spoke about some of those hurdles in an article that appeared about him over a decade ago.

“Although black operators could be hired, the union decided it was going to keep the colored out of those jobs was by not training them. Well, they didn’t know what to do with me when I applied for the job because I didn’t need any training, you see. I worked as a car cleaner and had trained myself in the yard on the tractor trolleys, streetcars and the buses. All I needed to learn was the bus lines (routes). A lot of the time, I had to take my own car out at night to follow behind a bus in order to learn the lines,” he revealed.

His skills and dedication to public service were recognized quickly, and he was promoted to safety and training instructor. Many of the innovations he pioneered in those positions are still in use by the MTA to this day.


Percy Brown once said that he had the good fortune to work in a job that helped so many others. Those of us here at the MTA who have lost the trusted friend we knew him to be, as well as the thousands of passengers who only knew him through his welcoming smile and kind words, recognize that we are the ones with the good fortune to have had Percy Brown in our lives.