Equity for Blacks in Science

Black History Month has ended. I am frustrated by the perception that interest and shared research into the contributions of Black citizens in U.S. history has ended too, so it’s time to move on. I don’t want to move on and read parallel history books to learn the complete history of my country. I've been thinking about so many of the rich stories that I've read, heard and seen this month about Black individuals who were previously unknown or obscured and whose contributions to making living U.S. history are an afterthought or shadow. In some cases, their stories reside only in family lore. It's made me consider my own family history from a different perspective.

?I reflect on the 1940s – World War II and its technologies. I see that as a particular demarcation in the history of science in this country – in the world. It was the dawn of the nuclear age. As such, most people focus on Einstein, Oppenheimer, and Eisenhower as the key figures who determined how the nuclear scientific learnings would be applied and leveraged throughout the rest of the 20th century and into the 21st century. The participation of Black scientists, laboratory workers and science students is not something that's discussed.

?When we talk about black inventors and scientists, we generally think about 19th century into early 20th century inventions or the innovations of the late 20th century. But what about the time, that crucial time when there was a major advancement in science, from mechanical physics to the exploration of nuclear physics and its applications? That's the time, that's the context in which I started to see my family’s lives.

?I think about my uncle Kenneth, who served this country as part of the Manhattan project at Columbia University with Dr. Harold Urey – the 1934 Nobel prize winner who discovered deuterium – heavy hydrogen. Their work on uranium enrichment was done for Kellex Corp. – a secret division of Kellogg, created with the government during the war for that research. They developed science that supported strategic decisions made at Los Alamos. Like many scientists, working on the project left him with dueling thoughts and feelings following the war. Having been educated at The City University of New York – the nation’s first free public institution of higher education, following the war my uncle became part of a burgeoning field. As one of the first nuclear engineers, the fact that he was Black and disabled by a virus that crippled his legs in college was even more remarkable.

In 1979 he was involved in addressing the partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island reactor in Pennsylvania. He referred the engineering firm where my father was a mechanical engineer - also educated at CUNY, to clean up the radioactive water. My father Charles' core work and subsequent patents involved jet engines – another up-and-coming technology of the mid-20th century. The brothers, who both work on government contracts shared non-confidential information about their work. That shared knowledge resulted in success for both of their employers – a good example of the benefits of Black networking.

My Aunt Ivy was a nurse and lieutenant in the Women’s Army Corps. In those days it was quite a remarkable achievement. She’d finished college before the war started and then she enlisted. One of my grandmother’s employers for whom she was housekeeper said, “Now that your daughter has graduated, she will be the ideal nanny for my child.” My grandmother ignored her, of course, and supported a very different future for my aunt. After the war, Aunt Ivy used the GI Bill to attend Meharry Medical College and became chief of radiology at Tuskegee Veterans’ Administration Hospital https://www.ajronline.org/doi/pdf/10.2214/ajr.166.2.8553926

Something important to highlight is not just that she was a practicing physician working in the cutting edge of the science but that she was a graduate of New York City public education – high school and Hunter College, who worked for the federal government leveraging federal benefits available to veterans to get there. By the 1960s she was a rare Black and even rarer woman who had slipped, unnoticed, into systems not designed for first generation Black immigrants. ?She was a rightful beneficiary of her parents’ tax dollars as were her brothers. At the time, NYC public institutions provided a great education with fewer barriers to educating women, people of color and children of immigrants than today and elsewhere.

My hypothesis is that the siblings’ contribution to the intellectual capital of the U.S. was, in part, possible because they were practitioners of new technologies – nuclear physics and jet propulsion. The leading edge of disciplines whose potential had yet to be valued and application markets developed. So, there were minimal institutional barriers to resist or overcome. Theirs were personal battles to create and deliver value. While their work was largely unheralded it was/is critical to the foundation of the science and industries we take for granted today.

?A takeaway for young Black students today is that the greatest opportunities to excel may be by innovating in new, new spaces. Learning and leading new technologies and new applications that will deliver unexpected value to the world where institutional obstacles have yet to be erected. Innovations are a product of envisioning where a discipline is evolving then applying knowledge and creativity to create an indispensable future. The future has the potential to bring greater equity to those who have been served least by advances in our society and in doing so the lives all will be enhanced. ?

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