Robert Brown is one of the most influential North Carolinians you’ve never heard of.
He had a pretty humble start in High Point, where he was born and raised. He was among the city’s first African-American police officers in the 1950s.
But he moved on quickly, first as a federal drug enforcement officer, and then as an adviser to some of the world’s most powerful people: Martin Luther King Jr., Richard Nixon, Nelson Mandela and John F. Kennedy, and that’s only part of the list.