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." 

 

J. Leonard Farmer

Unveiling of Historical Marker

The first African American PhD in Texas, Dr. Farmer arrived in Marshall in 1917 to pastor Ebenezer Methodist Church and to teach Latin, religion, psychology and philosophy at Wiley College. He later was on the faculty of Rust College in Holly Springs, Mississippi, Gammon Theological Seminary in Atlanta, Howard University School of Theology in Washington DC, and Huston College (now Huston-Tillotson) in Austin, where he also served as registrar and dean. He returned to Wiley in 1936, and served on the faculty with Melvin Tolson whose debate team was the basis for "The Great Debaters". In the film, Dr. Farmer is portrayed by Forest Whitaker.

Dr. Farmer was born on June 12, 1886 in Kingstree, South Carolina, and attended Mary McLeod Bethune's Cookman Institute in Florida and Boston University. The scholarship he won to BU did not cover transportation, and he walked the 1200 miles to Massachusetts. He completed the coursework and dissertation for his doctorate in one year; the program had a two-year residence requirement and he spent the additional year doing post-graduate work at Harvard.

Dr. Farmer was the father of civil rights leader and CORE founder James Farmer, shown above at the 1998 dedication of the Texas Historical Marker on the Wiley Campus. Dr. Farmer passed away on May 14, 1961, the day before his son was scheduled to enter Alabama with the Freedom Riders.

Dr. Lawrence A Nixon

Making early challenges to the white primaries introduced in 1923,  Dr. Nixon twice won favorable decisions before the U. S. Supreme Court which were circumvented by the state Democratic party making procedural changes to deny African Americans the vote. It was not until 1944 in Smith v. Allwright, brought to the Supreme Court by Thurgood Marshall, that the white primaries were overturned.

Dr. Nixon, a Marshall native and graduate of Wiley College and Meharry Medical College, was a founding member of the El Paso NAACP, the first chapter in the state. In 1955 he was the first African American admitted to the Texas State Medical Society.