African American Women Chemists In The Modern Era

This is the second of two books about African-American female chemists. The first book (African-American Women Chemists, 2011) focused on the early pioneers--women chemists from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Act. African American Women Chemists in the Modern Era focuses on contemporary women who have benefited from the Civil Rights Act and are now working as chemists or chemical engineers. This book was produced by taking the oral history of women who are leaders in their field and who wanted to tell the world how they suceeded. It features eighteen amazing women in this book and each of them has a claim to fame, despite hiding in plain sight. These women reveal the history of their lives from youth to adult. Overall, Jeannette Brown aims to inspire women and minorities to pursue careers in the sciences, as evidenced by the successful career paths of the women that came before them.

"Beginning with Dr. Marie Maynard Daly, the first African American woman to receive a PhD in chemistry in the United States--in 1947, from Columbia University--this well researched and fascinating book celebrate the lives and history of African American women chemists. Written by Jeannette Brown, an African American chemist herself, the book profiles the lives of numerous women, ranging from the earliest pioneers up until the late 1960's when the Civil Rights Acts sparked greater career opportunities. Brown examines each woman's motivation to pursue chemistry, describes their struggles to obtain an education and their efforts to succeed in a field in which there were few African American men, much less African American women, and details their often quite significant accomplishments. The book looks at chemists in academia, industry, and government, as well as chemical engineers, whose career path is very different from that of the tradition chemist, and it concludes with a chapter on the future of African American women chemists, which will be of interest to all women interested in a career in science"--

The author tells her life story through journals and real life vignettes written in the first person. She describes her experiences while growing up in a segregated, mid-twentieth century African American community. Nurturing relationships and activities in her working class African American home, learning in segregated African American schools, and strong connections between her home, schools, and other community institutions are described. Family history and customs, community characteristics, and socio-economic and political circumstances and events that affected her early life and her upbringing are described. Included in her story are prominent people, places, events, and circumstances that facilitated her holistic development from early childhood through adolescence. Readers will be able to infer how all the above factors and enriched learning activities in and outside of school resulted in her a positive self-image and outlook on life as well as her determination to pursue chemistry studies in challenging higher education institutions. Throughout the book the author provides commentary in which she explicitly connects her early life with events and experiences (academic, professional, and personal family life) that occurred along her journey in later years.

2019 Foreword INDIES Finalist American Founders reveals men and women of African descent as key protagonists in the story of American democracy. It chronicles how black people developed and defended New World settlements, undermined slavery, and championed freedom throughout the hemisphere from the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries. While conventional history tends to reduce the roles of African Americans to antebellum slavery and the civil rights movement, in reality African residents preceded the English by a century and arrived in the Americas in numbers that far exceeded European migrants up until 1820. Afro-Americans were omnipresent in the founding and advancement of the Americas, and recurrently outnumbered Europeans at many times and places, from colonial Peru to antebellum Virginia. African-descended people contributed to every facet of American history as explorers, conquistadores, settlers, soldiers, sailors, servants, slaves, rebels, leaders, lawyers, litigants, laborers, artisans, artists, activists, translators, teachers, doctors, nurses, inventors, investors, merchants, mathematicians, scientists, scholars, engineers, entrepreneurs, generals, cowboys, pirates, professors, politicians, priests, poets, and presidents. The multitude of events and mixed-race individuals included in the book underscores that black and white Americans share the same history, and in many cases, the same ancestry. American Foundersis meant to celebrate this shared heritage and strengthen these bonds.

Now recognized as one of the most influential books of the twentieth century, Silent Spring exposed the destruction of wildlife through the widespread use of pesticides Rachel Carson's Silent Spring alerted a large audience to the environmental and human dangers of pesticides, spurring revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water. Despite condemnation in the press and heavy-handed attempts by the chemical industry to ban the book, Carson succeeded in creating a new public awareness of the environment which led to changes in government and inspired the ecological movement. It is thanks to this book, and the help of many environmentalists, that harmful pesticides such as DDT were banned from use in the US and countries around the world. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Lord Shackleton, a preface by World Wildlife Fund founder Julian Huxley, and an afterword by Carson's biographer Linda Lear.

The surprising, often fiercely feminist, always fascinating, yet barely known, history of home economics. The term “home economics” may conjure traumatic memories of lopsided hand-sewn pillows or sunken muffins. But common conception obscures the story of the revolutionary science of better living. The field exploded opportunities for women in the twentieth century by reducing domestic work and providing jobs as professors, engineers, chemists, and businesspeople. And it has something to teach us today. In the surprising, often fiercely feminist and always fascinating The Secret History of Home Economics, Danielle Dreilinger traces the field’s history from Black colleges to Eleanor Roosevelt to Okinawa, from a Betty Crocker brigade to DIY techies. These women—and they were mostly women—became chemists and marketers, studied nutrition, health, and exercise, tested parachutes, created astronaut food, and took bold steps in childhood development and education. Home economics followed the currents of American culture even as it shaped them. Dreilinger brings forward the racism within the movement along with the strides taken by women of color who were influential leaders and innovators. She also looks at the personal lives of home economics’ women, as they chose to be single, share lives with other women, or try for egalitarian marriages. This groundbreaking and engaging history restores a denigrated subject to its rightful importance, as it reminds us that everyone should learn how to cook a meal, balance their account, and fight for a better world.

Complements: Chemistry was their life: pioneering British women chemists, 1880-1949 (London: Imperial College Press, 2008).

Author Diann Jordan took a journey to find out what inspired and daunted black women in their desire to become scientists in America. Letting 18 prominent black women scientists talk for themselves, Sisters in Science becomes an oral history stretching across decades and disciplines and desires. From Yvonne Clark, the first black woman to be awarded a B.S. in mechanical engineering to Georgia Dunston, a microbiologist who is researching the genetic code for her race, to Shirley Jackson, whose aspiration led to the presidency of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Jordan has created a significant record of women who persevered to become firsts in many of their fields. It all began for Jordan when she was asked to give a presentation on black women scientists. She found little information and little help. After almost nine years of work, the stories of black women scientists can finally be told.