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By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune
By now, anyone who has ever heard of the Super Bowl knows that for the first time a team in it will be coached by an African-American. Make that two: the Chicago Bears' Lovie Smith and the Indianapolis Colts' Tony Dungy.
For a professional sports league that once banned black players, it's a measure of how far they--actually we--have come. A few morons occupying the sumps of wild-eyed racists may oppose black National Football League coaches, but they're so deep underground, where they belong, we rarely, if ever, hear from them.
So, as we're about to start Black History Month, it might be a good thing to review our progress. By going back to when there were rules against blacks doing much of anything except staying out of sight. Now, there not only is an absence of rules against, say, black coaches; the welcome mat is out with a rule requiring that at least one black candidate be interviewed for each opening.
So, as Black History Month begins in a few days, we should not forget men such as Percy Julian.
The fact that most readers are asking "Who?" makes my point. Percy Lavon Julian, an African-American, may be one of the greatest chemists, if not scientists, of our time. If you're curious about how great, the popular PBS science series "NOVA" mentions him alongside Albert Einstein, Galileo and Isaac Newton. The 100th anniversary of his birth (1899 in Jim Crow Alabama, as the son of a railway clerk) passed with barely any notice outside of his profession--obscurity that can be racked up not just to the American public's scientific and engineering illiteracy, but also to his race. Amazingly, that's particularly so in Chicago, where he spent much of his remarkable career establishing a global reputation for his accomplishments in organic chemistry, especially in the synthesis of medicinal drugs.
In 1935 he synthesized physostigmine, a critically important drug for treating glaucoma, which had been available in only limited supply from its natural source, the Calabar bean. Over the next decades, the American Chemical Society has noted, his work led to numerous breakthroughs, from soybean protein, adopted by the Navy during World War II for fire-fighting foams, to chemical substances ("intermediates") that are key to the mass production of synthetics for treating rheumatoid arthritis.
Despite these achievements, and along with his master's degree from Harvard and his PhD from the University of Vienna, he still could not find employment because of active--not passive--discrimination against minorities.
Even DePauw University, where he graduated valedictorian and was elected Phi Beta Kappa, denied him a faculty position.
Rejected by academia, he turned to industry, where rejections continued until 1936, when W.J. O'Brien, a white vice president of Glidden Co. in Chicago, offered him a job as director of research for the company's Soya Products Division. There, as one chemist said, he made "an industry out of the simple soybean." In 1953 he established Julian Laboratories, which he later sold for millions. Despite his stature, folks still tried to burn down and bomb his Oak Park home.
He died on April 19, 1975, the first African-American chemist inducted into the National Academy of Sciences.
You'll want to know more about this great man, even if your interests don't bend toward process chemistry, atom economy and waste minimization. Next week you can, as "NOVA" airs a two-hour documentary about Julian, called "Forgotten Genius." (In Chicago, the program will air on WTTW-Ch. 11 at 8 p.m. Feb. 6.) Hampered by a paucity of documentation because of his race, "NOVA" spent years tracking down and interviewing his aging contemporaries.
A moving force behind keeping Julian's memory alive is James P. Shoffner, emeritus chemistry professor at Columbia College and former board member of the American Chemical Society.
"Since I lived through some of those times, I can vouch for the honesty and integrity of the film," said Shoffner, an African-American. The movie, he said, honors a man who "was an inspiration and motivational figure for many young men and women. Although this was especially true for students and researchers of color, it was more generally true for all, no matter what their race, ethnicity or gender."
Still, said Joseph S. Francisco, a Purdue University chemistry professor, "Many African-American chemists are still struggling with some of the same issues."
Something to keep in mind as we celebrate the success of the Super Bowl coaches.
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune
