by Karol Crosbie

George Washington Carver. Samuel Proctor Massie. The two scientists’ Iowa State experience is separated by 50 years. Yet their lives are linked; their legacies are entwined. Both triumphed over racial barriers to become leaders who would inspire. Today, their names share space on a list of the most prestigious chemists in the world.

When Samuel Proctor Massie arrived on the Iowa State campus in 1944 to begin his doctorate in organic chemistry, he was well aware of Carver’s legacy. He knew that 50 years earlier, Iowa State had opened its doors to embrace its first African American student, and had opened them even wider to employ its first African American instructor. But Massie was to discover that doors don’t always stay open.

Unlike Carver, who was 35 years old when he received his M.S. at Iowa State, Massie was only 21 when he earned his Ph.D. The son of a teacher, he had spent his early childhood years at his mother’s side, while she taught in a one-room school house in Little Rock, Ark. He learned to read by the age of two, and graduated from high school at the age of 13. But – like Carver before him, who was denied entrance to Highland University in Kansas because of his race – Massie was denied entrance into the all-white University of Arkansas.

By the time he took graduate school entrance examinations, his scores were higher than those recorded for any other African American to date. He received his B.S. in chemistry from Arkansas AM&N College and his M.S. at Fisk University in Nashville.

When Massie arrived at Iowa State to pursue his Ph.D., he discovered that superior intellect wasn’t enough to allow him to live on campus.* Or join Alpha Chi Sigma. Or receive a teaching assistantship in the Chemistry Department.

“I was disappointed that I couldn’t have a fellowship at Iowa State,” Massie says. “I needed the money.” And Massie still remembers the explanation given to him by the director of the YMCA, when he was told he couldn’t live there. “He told me it ‘wouldn’t be the Christian thing to do.’ What he meant was that I’d be the only black, I’d be all by myself, and I’d be lonely.”

But, like Carver before him, Massie benefited from the tutelage of a successful mentor, and his academic experience at Iowa State was rewarding. He collaborated with chemistry professor Henry Gilman on silicon research and on atomic bomb research with the Manhattan Project.

Sam Massie would eventually share with George Washington Carver the distinction of being the first African-American to teach at a predominantly white university. After teaching appointments at Fisk and Howard Universities and an associate directorship at the National Science Foundation, he became president of North Carolina College in Durham in 1963, and caught the attention of President Lyndon Johnson. Johnson appointed him to a professorship at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. It was the first time an African American had held such a post in this almost-exclusively white institution.

Although the appointment was prestigious, the community of Annapolis was not ready to accept Sam Massie and his family. Today, his son, Trei Massie, remembers accompanying his father as they searched for a place to live in their new community. “The realtors would only take us to houses with structural problems; they shunned us from good neighborhoods where we knew houses were available.” For two years, they rented in a neighborhood that only a few years earlier had posted a sign that read “After sundown, blacks not welcome.” They then moved to the nearby town of Laurel, where Sam Massie still lives.

From that experience, young Trei Massie learned a lesson from his father that he considers his most valuable. “If something is wrong, you buck the status quo.” His father told his story to the newspaper, and soon the whole community was aware of the discrimination.

But, as his son describes him, Massie wasn’t one to “dwell on negative things very long. He knows how to let them go.” He soon became one of the most popular teachers at the Naval Academy and threw himself into research that would change lives. He received awards for his studies on drugs that would combat malaria and meningitis and received a patent for his work on gonorrhea. He worked on drugs to fight herpes and on a protective foam to guard against nerve gases. He co-founded a black studies program.

In 1970, the University of Arkansas, which had once denied him attendance, awarded Massie an honorary doctorate. In 1981, ISU honored him with the Distinguished Achievement Citation, the university’s highest alumni award.

Today, Massie says of all of his accomplishments, he is the most proud of the professorship of engineering in the environmental disciplines that the U.S. Dept. of Energy, Office of Environmental Management, established in his honor. A Dr. Samuel P. Massie Chair of Excellence, in the form of a $14.7 million grant, was awarded to 10 universities to enhance “groundbreaking environmental research and the production of top-level graduates.”

One of the universities to receive the Massie chair was Tuskegee University, which applied the research support, among other things, to its Carver Research Foundation and the George Washington Carver Agricultural Experiment Station.

As Massie flips through the glossy booklet describing the Massie Chair program, he points to the eight men recently hired as chairs. “Notice anything?” he asks. Although the prestigious leaders represent a number of races, not one is African American. His race is still playing catch-up, Massie says, in terms of money for scholarships and numbers of black professors who can share experiences, offer empathy, and serve as role models.

“When I arrived at the Academy, for the first time in many of these students’ lives, the opinion of a black person was important to them. How many times in your life does the opinion of a black person affect your promotion?

“The Chemistry Department at ISU hired their first black tenured professor in chemistry only two years ago. ISU needs to increase the number of minority teachers and students. But don’t hire them because they’re black; hire them because they’re good and because they do the work well.”

There is little doubt that the world considers Massie a man who has done his work well. In January 1998, his name appeared on the roster of the world’s 75 most distinguished chemists, compiled by Chemical and Engineering News. Massie shares space with Carver, Madame Curie, and Linus Pauling, and is among only 32 scientists who are still living. Only three chemists on the list are African American.

Trei Massie remembers a dad who picked him up every day from elementary school. A dad who listened so carefully to his sons, that he would remember almost everything they told him, and taught them an important skill along the way. “I learned how to listen from Dad. I’ve seen him get into touchy situations; he’s able to get out of them, not only by talking, but by listening and then reacting to what someone is saying.”

His students and children remember a man who taught them to respect all people, and at the same time to challenge disrespect. “Dad taught me not to limit myself by what I think is a barrier. Because generally if you push the barrier, it falls down.

“He told us that he didn’t know why God had granted him such gifts. But that he knew it was his responsibility to take advantage of his gifts and share them with others.”

* Although records do not show any formal policy of discrimination from Iowa State's residence department in the mid-1900s, many minority students had trouble finding roommates willing to share a room with them. If a roommate was not available, minorities may have been turned down for on-campus living.