15 African-Americans who were hidden heroes of the Manhattan Project

Harold Delaney 

Harold Delaney, of Philadelphia, worked as a chemist during the Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago's Metallurgical Laboratory, or "Met Lab." 

He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from Howard University in the early 1940s.

After the war, Delaney taught at Morgan State University in Baltimore from 1948 until 1969 and finished his doctorate in chemistry at Howard University. 

He became president of Manhattanville College in New York and served as interim president for Chicago State and Bowie State universities. He also served as vice president of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities until he retired in 1987. 

Harold B. Evans 

Harold Evans, of Brazil, Indiana, worked as a junior chemist during the Manhattan Project at the Chicago Met Lab.

He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from Michigan State University before being hired onto the Met Lab in 1943.

After the war, he researched chemical reactions of radioactive elements at the Argonne National Laboratory.

More:Bias kept black scientists out of Oak Ridge's atomic bomb work

James Forde 

James Forde was a lab assistant at the Nash Garage Building at Columbia University during the Manhattan Project.

He was the only African-American working in the building during the project.

Forde was hired onto the project in 1944 by the Union Carbide and Carbon Company to clean test tubes as scientists worked to develop the gaseous diffusion process. 

He told the Atomic Heritage Foundation that he was laid off after the war, while the white scientists working in the building were transferred to Los Alamos, New Mexico. 

He went to Brooklyn College and began working at the Columbia Broadcasting System, later earning his master's degree in public administration. He served as the director of health services for San Diego County and worked with several local organizations to improve minority and low-income health care. 

Ralph Gardner-Chavis 

Ralph Gardner-Chavis, of Cleveland, Ohio, worked as a chemist at the University of Chicago’s Met Lab during the Manhattan Project.

After earning a bachelor's in chemistry from the University of Illinois, Gardner-Chavis began working as a research assistant at the Chicago Met Lab in 1943. He worked closely with European refugee Enrico Fermi, who created the world's first nuclear reactor. 

Gardner-Chavis' plutonium research was used to develop the "Fat Man" atomic bomb. 

He spent two years waiting tables after the Manhattan Project before becoming a research chemist and project leader for Standard Oil Co. in his hometown. He earned his master's degree and doctorate from Case Western Reserve University while he worked there.

Jasper Jeffries

Jasper Jeffries, of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, worked as a physicist at the University of Chicago Met Lab from 1943 to 1946.

Jeffries earned his bachelor's degree at West Virginia State College and a master's in physical sciences at the University of Chicago. 

Jeffries was one of 70 scientists and workers at the Met Lab to sign the Szilard Petition, a document written by Leo Szilard asking President Harry Truman not to drop the atomic bomb on Japan without first demonstrating its power.

After the war, Jeffries taught physics at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and worked as an engineer for the Control Instrument Company. He later taught mathematics at Westchester Community College.

Lawrence Knox

Lawrence Knox, of New Bedford, Massachusetts, worked as a chemist at Columbia University's Division of War Research during the Manhattan Project. 

He earned his bachelor's degree in chemistry from Bates College and went on to earn a master's degree from Stanford University and a doctorate in organic chemistry from Harvard University.

Between degrees he taught at Morehouse College, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and North Carolina College.

According to the Chemical Heritage Foundation, Knox got involved with the Manhattan Project when he was helping the Division of War Research develop the malaria drug quinine. 

His quinine research was used to study effects of atomic bomb explosions. 

After the war, Knox earned four patents in three years working at Nopco Chemists. He went on to become the resident director at the Hickrill Chemical Research Foundation and eventually moved to Mexico City to work at Laboratorios Syntex S.A.

William Jacob Knox

Two years older than his brother Lawrence, William Jacob Knox also worked as a chemist at Columbia University during the Manhattan Project. 

He earned his undergraduate degree at Harvard University and went on to earn his master's degree and doctorate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Like his brother, he also taught chemistry at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University before becoming the chemistry department chair at Talladega College. 

He joined the Manhattan Project in 1943 to research using uranium hexafluoride gas to separate uranium isotope. Before the war ended, he was named head of the Corrosion Section.

After the war, Knox worked for Eastman Kodak and became active in the civil rights movement. He helped found the Rochester Urban League and establish minority scholarships.

He returned to teach at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University before retiring in 1973.

Blanche J. Lawrence

Blanche Lawrence worked as a research assistant in the Chicago Met Lab's health division. 

Lawrence received her bachelor's degree from Tuskegee University. She was the widow of Tuskegee Airman Capt. Erwin Lawrence of the 99th Pursuit Squadron, who died on a strafing mission over an enemy airfield near Athens, Greece.

After the war, she continued to serve the country as a technician at Argonne National Laboratory. She became a junior biochemist within four years of beginning work there. 

Samuel P. Massie Jr. 

Samuel Massie, of Little Rock, Arkansas, worked as a chemist at Iowa State University's Ames Laboratory during the Manhattan Project. 

He applied to the University of Kansas after junior college but was denied because of his race. He instead went to Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical and Normal College, now a University of Arkansas campus, and graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree in chemistry.

He earned his master's degree in chemistry from Fisk University in Nashville and went on to complete his Ph.D. at Iowa State University, which had some segregated facilities at the time.

There, he began working as a research assistant to Manhattan Project consultant Henry Gilman. 

After the war, Massie finished his doctorate and went on to teach chemistry at Langston University in Oklahoma, where he became the chemistry department chair. 

He later taught in and chaired the chemistry department at Fisk University, too, and served as an associate program director at the National Science Foundation.

Massie served as the president of North Carolina College, and in 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him as the first African-American professor to serve at the United States Naval Academy. 

In his honor, the Department of Energy created the Samuel P. Massie Chairs of Excellence program for African-American students in 1993.

Carolyn B. Parker

Carolyn Beatrice Parker worked as a physicist on the Dayton Project, which was a part of the Manhattan Project. The Dayton Project was a research and development project to produce polonium during World War II, as part of the larger Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bombs.

Parker earned her bachelor's degree from Fisk University in 1938 and went on to receive her master's in mathematics from the University of Michigan before joining the Manhattan Project in Dayton, Ohio.

Her work involved polonium separation used for the detonation of the bomb. She earned a second master's degree in physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology after the war. 

Parker died of leukemia at age 47 while working toward her doctorate. In 2008, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health determined the disease was an occupational risk of working with polonium.

Edwin R. Russell

Edwin Roberts Russell, of Columbia, South Carolina, worked as a chemist at the University of Chicago's Met Lab during the Manhattan Project. 

Russell earned a bachelor's degree from Benedict College in 1935 and a master's degree in chemistry from Howard University in 1937, where he served as a chemistry assistant and instructor until 1942. 

He moved to the University of Chicago the same year to pursue his doctorate in surface chemistry and joined the Manhattan Project at the Met Lab, researching the extraction of plutonium-239 from uranium. 

After the war, Russell went on to serve as the science division chairman at Allen University in his hometown. He later worked as a research chemist at the Savannah River Nuclear Laboratory, earning 11 patents for his atomic energy processes. 

Upon his death in 1996, the South Carolina Legislature passed a resolution declaring him “one of South Carolina’s ablest and most distinguished leaders.” 

Lloyd Quarterman

During the Manhattan Project, Lloyd Quarterman, of  Philadelphia, worked as a junior chemist with Fermi at Columbia University and at the University of Chicago Met Lab.

He earned his bachelor's degree at St. Augustine’s College in 1943 and was quickly recruited to the Manhattan Project.

In Chicago, Quarterman was part of the team of scientists who isolated the uranium isotope necessary for fission and the creation of the atomic bomb.

After the war, Quarterman went on to earn his master's degree in science from Northwestern University and then went to work at the Argonne National Laboratory. 

He continued studying fluoride solutions and developed a corrosion resistant diamond "window” through which it was possible to study hydrogen fluoride's complex molecular structure.

In the years before his death, he began preliminary research into blood substitutes or perfluorocarbons. . 

Moddie Taylor 

Moddie Daniel Taylor, of Nymph, Alabama, worked as a chemist at the University of Chicago Met Lab during the Manhattan Project. 

He earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Lincoln University in 1935, where he was the valedictorian of his class and graduated summa cum laude.

He taught chemistry there until 1939, when he began graduate school at the University of Chicago. He earned his master's and doctorate degrees there before joining the Manhattan Project as an associate chemist.

His main research was focused on the chemical properties of rare earth metals. 

In 1946 Secretary of War Robert Patterson awarded Taylor a Certificate of Merit for his research and contributions to the Manhattan Project.

After the war, Taylor became a professor at Howard University and chaired the chemistry department there. 

In 1956, Taylor received a grant from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to continue his research in acid-base studies of disassociation in gaseous systems.

Four years later, he published a textbook titled "First Principles of Chemistry," which has been used in colleges around the country.

Taylor was selected by the Manufacturing Chemists Association as one of the nation's six top college chemistry professors and earned the Honor Scroll from the Washington Institute of Chemists for his research and teaching in 1972.

George Sherman Carter

George Sherman Carter, of Gloucester County, Virginia, was hired on to the Manhattan Project in 1943 to work as a physicist at Columbia University.

He previously earned his bachelor's degree in biology from Lincoln University in 1940 and went on to study at Columbia University Teachers College.

At Columbia, he studied nuclear fission under Nobel laureate Isidor Rabi, a Polish immigrant scientist credited with discovering nuclear magnetic resonance. 

Benjamin Franklin Scott

Benjamin Franklin Scott, of Florence, South Carolina, worked as a chemist at the University of Chicago's Met Lab during the Manhattan Project. 

Before he joined the project, he earned his bachelor's degree at Morehouse College.

At the Met Lab, Scott worked in the instrumentation and measurements section. After the war, he worked on the production of Geiger counters while finishing his master's degree at the University of Chicago.

Soon after, he was hired onto the Nuclear Instrument Company as a radiochemist. He later became the technical director for the New England Nuclear Assay Corp. in Boston.

Thanks to the Atomic Heritage Foundation for its assistance on this report.

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