ERNEST E. JUST
1883 - 1941

Just, Ernest Everett, (b. August 14, 1883, Charleston, S.C.; d. October 27, 1941, Washington, D.C.), African American biologist and educator who taught at Howard University for more than 30 years.

Edward Everett Just was one of the most respected scientists and teachers of his time. Only four years old when his father died, he and his siblings moved with their widowed mother, Mary, from Charleston to James Island, a nearby Gullah community. There his mother worked in the phosphate fields — typically a man's job — and taught school. Before long, she founded a school in the community, as well as a church, and led local farmers into cooperative business ventures.

Just grew up in an atmosphere permeated by his mother's love of learning and by the natural beauty of James Island. Once he had exhausted the local educational opportunities, his mother helped send him to Kimball Union, a preparatory school in New Hampshire. Arriving in 1900, Just, the school's only black student, found a rich learning environment and a warm social one. He edited the school's yearbook, studied classics and oratory, and delivered the commencement address his senior year.

From Kimball Union, Just entered Dartmouth College in 1903, where he was again the only African American in his class. Unlike at Kimball, however, Just found himself socially isolated. Turning his attention to his studies, he switched his major from Greek to biology and graduated magna cum laude in 1907. He also minored in history and took several courses in sociology, then a new academic discipline.

Despite Just's having earned high honors at Dartmouth — and being elected to Phi Beta Kappa — the pervasive racism in academia kept him from being offered any positions at predominantly white institutions. But Morehouse College and Howard University, historically black schools, both wanted him, and Just accepted a job as instructor in English and rhetoric at Howard. In 1909 Howard's president, Wilbur Thirkield, persuaded Just to switch to teaching biology and zoology, as part of the liberal arts curriculum and as preparation for medical school. Three years later he was made a full professor. Just's popularity as a teacher was legendary, and his support of students extended beyond the classroom. In 1911 he helped Howard students form Omega Psi Phi, which became a national black fraternity.

Just began pursuing more advanced zoological research, spending summers at the Marine Biology Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. He showed an affinity for the work, and focussed on embryology and the fertilization of marine animal eggs. It was at Woods Hole that Just became the friend and colleague of Frank R. Lillie, a noted white scientist. In 1916, after four years of long-distance study and the publication of several papers, Just received a Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Chicago. Just spent a total of 20 summers working at Woods Hole and published more than 50 scientific papers as well as an influential text, Biology of the Cell Surface.

Just's years at Howard were, according to his biographer Kenneth Manning, both a distraction from the research he loved and an expression of his deep commitment to the black community. As both Manning and Mary White Ovington, who profiled Just in her Portraits in Color, have pointed out, Just believed African Americans should study science for the "objective" and "cold-blooded" rigor of the discipline. But Just also relished the opportunity to work in Europe, where racial prejudice was not nearly as prevalent. Beginning in 1929, Just undertook a series of extended research tours to Italy, Germany, and France that lasted until 1940, when he and his German-born wife — he had divorced his first wife, a fellow Howard professor — were briefly held in Nazi-occupied France before returning to the United States.

It was his last trip. Already ill with pancreatic cancer, Just spent his final year mending rifts with the Howard administration, which resented his extensive travel, much of it funded by philanthropic foundations and his own family. As his health worsened, Just moved into his sister's Washington, D.C., home, where he died in 1941. In a tribute in the journal Science, Just's mentor Frank R. Lillie wrote that "an element of tragedy ran through all Just's scientific career due to the limitations imposed by being a Negro in America.

"Contributed By: Kate Tuttle
Reference: Microsoft Africana
Constructed by: Alaina Turner