Ernest Just

"The Brotherhood of Man is not so much a Christian doctrine as a fundamental biological law. For biology does not and cannot recognize any specific differences among humans. This is a fact of tremendous significance for the human family. The peace of the world lives here. And the transcendent value of science to man will be measured in just proportion to which we can realize this truth."

Ernest Everett Just was born August 14, 1883 in Charleston, South Carolina. His mother, a teacher, thought that educational opportunities for African Americans were limited in the south, and he was sent to Kimball Union Academy, a college prep boarding school in Meriden, New Hampshire. He finished the four-year program in three years, graduating as valedictorian, having served as class president, editor of the school newspaper, and president of the debate team. He then attended Dartmouth College, earning bachelor's degrees in history and biology with special honors in zoology, again as valedictorian as the only Magna Cum Laude graduate and Phi Beta Kappa member in the class.

Despite his academic achievements, the only teaching positions Just was offered were at African American colleges. In 1907 he joined the faculty of Howard University, becoming chair of the Zoology Department in 1912, and serving on the Howard Medical School faculty as head of the Physiology Department. He organized the first drama club at Howard, and with three students founded Omega Psi Phi fraternity in 1911.

Just began graduate studies as a research assistant at the Marine Biology Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and took a year's leave of absence from Howard to attend the University of Chicago, receiving a PhD in experimental embryology in 1916. He had already become known as an expert on the reproductive systems and cells of marine animals, and was awarded the NAACP's first Spingarn Medal in 1915. His work is summarized in his 1939 book The Biology of the Cell Surface.

He continued his summer research at Woods Hole until 1929 when he went to the Zoological Station in Naples, Italy. The next year he was the first American to be invited to the prestigious Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, where he worked until the rise of the rise of the Nazi Party led him to relocate to Paris in 1933.  Foreigners were warned to leave the country in 1940, but he stayed to finish his current research and was placed in a prisoner of war camp after the German invasion. The U. S. State Department quickly arranged his release, and he returned to the United States. Already in ill health, he died October 27, 1941 in Washington, DC at the age of 58.

Benjamin E. Mays

Every man and woman is born into the world to do something unique and something distinctive and if he or she does not do it, it will never be done. ~Benjamin E. Mays

Benjamin Elijah Mays, whom Martin Luther King Jr. called his "spiritual mentor", was born August 1, 1894 in Greenwood County, South Carolina. After graduating as high school valedictorian, he attended Bates College in Lewiston, Maine where he graduated with honors as a class leader in 1920. He explained his choice of a primarily white, New England college in his 1971 autobiography Born to Rebel, saying "How could I know I was not inferior to the white man, having never had a chance to compete with him?"


Mays then taught at psychology, debate and religion at Morehouse College in Atlanta and pastored Shiloh Avenue Baptist Church before attending the University of Chicago where he earned an MA (1925) and PhD from the School of Religion (1935). With Joseph Nicholson he co-authored The Negro's Church in 1933, a study funded by the Institute of Social and Religious Research.

With Bates College Debate Team, 1920

Mays served as Dean of the Howard University School of Religion from 1934 to 1940. During this time he traveled to India, meeting Mohandas Gandhi and was greatly influenced by Gandhi's view on non-violent resistance. He then became president of Morehouse College, a position he held until 1967.

While at Morehouse he excelled at fundraising and other administrative duties, keeping enrollment steady during World War II. He avidly supported students participating in sit-ins during the 1960's, one of a minority of college presidents nationwide to do so. In addition to Dr. King, other alumni he influenced were theologian Howard Thurman, Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, and Georgia State Senator Julian Bond. After retirement he served on the Atlanta Board of Education from 1970 to 1981, becoming its first African American president.

Mays died in Atlanta on March 28, 1984 at the age of 89. He was a member of Omega Psi Phi fraternity. His philosophy of education is reflected in these quotes from Born to Rebel:

"The tragedy doesn't lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach. It isn't a calamity to die with dreams unfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream. It isn't a disgrace not to reach the stars, but it is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for."

"To me black power must mean hard work, trained minds, and perfected skills to perform in a competitive society.The injustices imposed upon the black man for centuries make it all the more obligatory that he develop himself…. There must be no dichotomy between the development of one's mind and a deep sense of appreciation of one's heritage. An unjust penalty has been imposed upon the Negro because he is black. The dice are loaded against him. Knowing this, as the Jew knows about anti-Semitism, the black man must never forget the necessity that he perfect his talents and potentials to the ultimate."

Charles S. Johnson

"There is no domestic problem in America which has given thoughtful men more concern than the problem of the relations between the white and the Negro races." ~ The Negro in Chicago, 1922

The leading African American sociologist of his generation, Charles Spurgeon Johnson was born on July 24, 1893 in Bristol Virginia. He earned a bachelor's degree from Virginia Union University in Richmond and a doctorate from the University of Chicago where he studied under Robert E. Park. His studies were interrupted by World War I. He served in France in the 103rd Pioneer Infantry Division and achieved the rank of sergeant major.

In the aftermath of the 1919 riots he served on the Chicago Commission on Race Relations and co-authored the commission's report, published as the 700-page book The Negro in Chicago. Although critics felt the report did not place adequate responsibility for the riot on the white Jim Crow-era culture of the day, it has prevailed as the classic model of race relations reports.

From 1922 to 1928 Johnson was research director for the National Urban League in New York. During this time he founded and edited the league's Opportunity magazine, at the time a major voice of the Harlem Renaissance. He also edited the anthology Ebony and Topaz, containing the works of the premier poets, essayists and social scientists of the times.

Wanting to return to the South and to academic life, in 1928 he became chairman of the sociology department of Fisk University in Nashville and in 1946 he became Fisk's first African American president. He established the Fisk Institute of Race Relations, the first "think tank" at a historically black university, and published several books on the culture of the South with the most notable being Shadow of the Plantation (1934) and Growing Up in the Black Belt  (1940). He was able to attract faculty members such as Arna Bontemps, James Weldon Johnson, and Aaron Douglas.

In 1930 Johnson was part of a three-man League of Nations team investigating labor practices in Liberia. He later served as a consultant to President Hoover's Conference on Negro Housing and under President Roosevelt served on the TVA and consulted with the Department of Agriculture on farm tenancy. After World War II he was part of a UNESCO delegation sent to Japan to make recommendations about the country's educational system.

Johnson was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. He died in Nashville on October 27, 1956 at the age of 63.