Henry McBay

Award-winning chemist Henry Ransom Cecil McBay was born May 29, 1914 in Mexia. He graduated second in his class at Wiley College in 1934 with a BS in organic chemistry, and earned his MS from Atlanta University in 1936. He was the first recipient of funding from George Washington Carver's donation to Tuskegee Institute for research on extraction of fiber from okra to replace jute fibers. Concluding that the okra was too brittle for this use he concluded that "I have researched myself out of a job."

While a doctoral candidate at the University of Chicago he twice won the Elizabeth Norten Price for Excellence in Chemical Research in 1944 and 1945, paving the way for inexpensive peroxide compounds to be used in chemical reactions.

Dr. McBay then returned to Atlanta as an Assistant Professor at Morehouse College, becoming Department Chair in 1956. During this time he also served as a consultant to the UNESCO chemistry education program in Liberia. He later taught at Spelman College and Atlanta Clark University, serving a total of 41 years in the Atlanta University system until his death in 1995.

Regarding racism, Dr. McBay said that

"Nature distributes its talents and capabilities and its faults at random throughout the human species. People are not yet willing to accept that."