Samuel P. Massie

Dr. Samuel Proctor Massie, Jr. (July 3, 1919-April 10, 2005) was an African American student at Iowa State College.

Life and Education

Dr. Samuel P. Massie, Jr. was born in Little Rock, Arkansas. His father was a high school and junior college biology teacher and his mother was a teacher at a rural one-room schoolhouse in Keo. Samuel was a highly intelligent and a very high level reader which led to him being skipped grades throughout his school career. He enrolled in Paul Lawrence Dunbar High School, where his father taught, at 10 years old. He completed and graduated high school in 1932 at 13 years old.

After high school, he worked at a grocery store for a year because he was too young for college. In 1934, he enrolled in Dunbar Junior College in Little Rock where he studied math and liberal arts. He was elected Student Body President during his second year. After earning an Associate's degree, he entered Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanic and Normal College in 1936. He majored in Chemistry with a minor in French and Math. He graduated in 18 years old with a B.S. in Chemistry with the highest honors.

Dr. Massie went on to receive a scholarship and complete a M.S. in Chemistry in 1940 from Fisk University in Nashville. He went on to become an associate professor of math and physics as well as the acting head of the Math and Physics department at Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical and Normal College.

In 1941, Dr. Massie left Arkansas AMN to pursue his Ph.D. at Iowa State College. He notes that he was passed over for a teaching assistantship in the Chemistry department due to his race. During World War II, he took a hiatus from his studies from 1943-1945 to work full-time as a research assistant on a special research team under the supervision of Professor Henry Gilman that worked on the Manhattan Project (a top secret effort to develop an atomic bomb). Massie contributed to research focusing on converting uranium isotopes into usable liquid compounds for the bomb. After the war, he resumed his studies and completed his Ph.D. in 1946. Massie recalled in a 1964 interview, “All of us had to make a decision how we would serve the war efforts. I dropped out of school and went into the chemical warfare service with Dr. Gilman at Ames.”

In 1960, after serving at a number of historically black colleges and universities, he accepted a position at the National Science Foundation in Washington, DC as the Associate Program Director for Special Projects in Science Education. He was tasked with helping colleges and universities improve their labs and libraries.

In 1966, after serving three years as the President of North Carolina College at Durham, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him to a Chemistry professorship at the United States Naval Academy. He was the first Black professor at the Academy and as such, experienced a lot of open racism there and in Annapolis as a whole. While at the Naval Academy, his extensive research contributed to the field of human health and environmental science. He researched drugs to infections such as malaria, meningitis, and herpes. In 1985, he and his colleagues were awarded a patent for an antibiotic to treat gonorrhea. In 1990, Massie received a faculty achievement award from the Naval Academy. In 1994, he retired from the Academy as Professor Emeritus.

HBCU Contributions

After completing his Ph.D., Massie accepted a position as a professor in the Chemistry department at Fisk University. He left Fisk after a year to teach and chair the Chemistry department at Langston University where he taught until 1953. In his final year at Langston, he was elected President of the Oklahoma Academy of Science.

In 1953, he returned to Fisk to be a professor and Chair of their Chemistry department. His research there led to the development of the anti-psychotic drug, Thorazine. That research is still highly regarded today.

In 1961, he became a professor and Chair of the Pharmaceutical Chemistry department at Howard University.

He left Howard in 1963 to become the president of North Carolina College at Durham.

He lectured at many HBCUs including Dillard, Virginia State, and University of Maryland - Eastern Shore. He received honorary degrees from Bowie State amongst a list of other places.

Legacy

Dr. Massie was a member of the Maryland State Board of Community Colleges for twenty one years -- he served as the Chairman of the Board for ten years. In 1989, the Board established a Massie Science Prize in his honor, to be awarded to an outstanding science student at a Maryland community college.

In 1981, Iowa State University awarded with the Distinguished Achievement Citation -- the University's highest award.