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Article

Blanton, John W.  

William A. Morgan

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

mechanical engineer and rocket scientist, was born John W. Blanton in Louisville, Kentucky, the son of John O. and Carolyn Blanton.

Blanton attended Purdue University in Indiana, graduating with a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1943. He began his career at Bell Aircraft Corporation in Buffalo, New York, where he worked from 1943 to 1945 and from 1950 through 1956. Initially involved in the research and development of gas and rocket engines, Blanton helped develop the X‐1, which on 14 October 1947 became the first aircraft to break the sound barrier in a human‐operated, level flight.

Two years after marrying Corinne Jones of Mississippi in 1943, Blanton was named the chief engineer of thermo and fluid dynamics at Frederick Flader Incorporated, in Buffalo, New York, where he worked for five years. In 1956 he joined General Electric in Evendale Ohio and continued to make ...

Article

Bohannon, Horace  

Anne K. Driscoll

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

pilot, Tuskegee Airman, civil servant, teacher, and juvenile probation officer, was born in Atlanta, Georgia, the youngest child of Georgia Crane and Earl Bohannon, occupations unknown. Bohannon was the youngest of ten children, although only his oldest sister and a brother were alive when Bohannon was born. One of his greatest influences growing up was his mother, who taught him the importance of principles, hard work, and honesty.

Bohannon began working at eight years of age in a hardware store His next job was working on a laundry truck It was the laundry job that ultimately led Bohannon to his dream of becoming an aviator Bohannon stopped twice a week at Atlanta s Candler Field later William B Hartsfield Airport While picking up the aviators laundry he listened to the pilots discussing their flights the difficulties of flying in adverse weather conditions and other matters that inspired him to ...

Article

Coffey, Cornelius Robinson  

Jim Garrett

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

aviator, was born in Newport, Arkansas, a farming community on the banks of the White River. Although the names of his parents are now unknown, Coffey recalled in 1993 that “my daddy was a railroad man in the days when an Afro-American could hook a train together and drive a locomotive from the roundhouse to the station, but he could never become a full-fledged engineer” (Chicago Tribune, 25 July 1993). Cornelius Coffey, however, would spend a large portion of his life suspended in the air operating the controls of an airplane. This was a time when even to dream of being a pilot was considered preposterous for a black youth growing up in segregated Arkansas. In order to escape such limitations imposed on blacks in the Jim Crow South, the family sought new opportunities first in Nebraska, and then ultimately in Chicago in 1923.

Shortly after ...

Article

Hilyer, Andrew F(ranklin)  

Robert G. McGuire

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
07 April 2005
Published online:
01 December 2006

Born a slave in Georgia on August 14, 1858, Andrew Franklin Hilyer was taken to Nebraska as a child by his mother. At her death he moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he was befriended by the wealthy Gale and Pillsbury families. In 1882 he graduated from the University of Minnesota. He then moved to Washington, D.C., where he received his LL.B. (bachelor of laws) in 1884 and his LL.M. (master of laws) in 1885 from Howard University. In 1886 he married Mamie Elizabeth Nichols a descendant of free blacks who had lived in the Washington area for several generations The Hilyers had two sons Gale P and Franklin and one daughter Kathleen Hilyer served as a Class II clerk in the Treasury Department and later as a member of the Interior Department Division of the General Accounting Office Seven years after the death of his first wife ...

Article

Macaulay, Herbert  

Jeremy Rich

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

Nigerian political activist and journalist, was born Herbert Samuel Heelas Macaulay on 14 November 1864 in Lagos, Nigeria. He was the seventh child of Thomas Babington Macaulay, founder and principal of the Church Missionary Society Grammar School in Lagos, and Abigail Crowther Macaulay, daughter of the first Anglican bishop in West Africa, Samuel Ajayi Crowther. Macaulay received an outstanding primary and secondary education thanks to his affluent family, and he attended the renowned St. Paul’s school in Breadfruit. In 1881 he joined the Nigerian colonial administration as a clerk. He served in this capacity for the next nine years, and his intelligence and loyalty impressed his British superiors. Governor of Nigeria Alfred Moloney supported Macaulay’s efforts to further his education in England, and Macaulay received a scholarship to study engineering in Plymouth. From 1890 to 1893 the young Nigerian excelled in school and developed a lifelong interest in Western ...

Article

Macaulay, Herbert Samuel Heelas  

Nazneen Ahmed

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
19 March 2007
Published online:
30 September 2008

Influential political activist and founder member of the Nigerian National Democratic Party. The son of distinguished African missionaries, Macaulay was educated at the Church Missionary Society grammar school founded by his father. After completing his education in 1881, he entered the civil service. In 1890 he travelled to England, where he became the first Nigerian to qualify as a civil engineer. On his return to Lagos, he was appointed as a surveyor but soon became dissatisfied with the system, which discriminated against African civil servants. In 1898 he left the civil service to go into private practice as a licensed surveyor and architect but his business never proved to be a success In financial difficulties Macaulay misappropriated funds and was sentenced to two years imprisonment effectively barring him from public office Nevertheless he grew to be an influential figure in Nigerian politics through his staunch editorials for the ...

Article

Murray, Robert Fulton, Jr.  

Audra J. Wolfe

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

geneticist and physician, was born in Newburgh, New York, the son of Robert Fulton and Henrietta Frances (Judd) Murray. Murray stayed close to home for most of his education, completing a BS with a pre-med concentration from Union College in Schenectady, New York, in 1953, before proceeding to the University of Rochester School of Medicine for his MD in 1958. Murray married Isobel Ann Parks on 26 August 1956, while still in medical school. Their marriage produced four children: Colin Charles, Robert Fulton III, Suzanne Frances, and Dianne Akwe.

After completing medical school, Murray and his wife moved to Denver, Colorado, where he began a long career in clinical medicine. He completed an internship at Denver General Hospital (1958–1959) before moving on to the University of Colorado Medical Center for a residency in internal medicine (1959–1962 For ...

Article

Walker, Arthur Bertram Cuthbert, Jr.  

Robert Fikes

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

astrophysicist and university administrator, was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Arthur Bertram Cuthbert Walker Sr., a lawyer, and Hilda Forte, a social worker. At age five his family moved to New York City. Thanks to his mother, who recognized the boy's fondness for science and repeatedly intervened to prevent teachers from discouraging him, Walker enrolled in the Bronx High School of Science, where his interest in chemistry and physics heightened. In 1957 he graduated with honors in physics from the Case Institute of Technology (later Case Western Reserve University) in Cleveland, Ohio. He was elected to Tau Beta Pi, an engineering honor society, in 1955, and to Sigma Xi, a scientific research society, in 1960. At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with the aid of fellowships and a research assistantship, Walker earned his master's degree in 1958 and a doctorate ...

Article

Washington, Warren Morton  

Charles W. Jr. Carey

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

meteorologist, was born in Portland, Oregon, to Edwin Washington, a railroad porter, and Dorothy Morton, a homemaker. He became interested in science in high school, but his interests shifted during his senior year from chemistry to physics, which he majored in at Oregon State University in Corvallis. His interest in meteorology stemmed from a job he held as an undergraduate at a weather radar installation near Corvallis that tracked storms from the Pacific Ocean as they hit the Oregon coast. After receiving a BS in Physics in 1958 and an MS in Meteorology in 1960, he entered the graduate program at Pennsylvania State University, receiving a PhD in Meteorology in 1964. That same year, he accepted a full-time position as a research scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, where he had worked the previous summer.

As a graduate student ...

Article

Williams, Hosea  

Mary A. Waalkes

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

civil rights activist, was born in Attapulgus, Georgia, to an unwed teenage mother who died while Williams was still a child. Raised in poverty by his grandparents, Williams left home at age fourteen and wandered for a period of time before joining the army to serve during World War II. Returning as a wounded veteran, he endured further physical assault at the hands of Georgia whites who severely beat him for drinking from a water fountain.

Using his veteran's benefits, Williams gained a master's degree in Chemistry from Atlanta University and worked until 1963 for the Department of Agriculture in Savannah, Georgia. Williams married Juanita Terry and settled into a middle-class lifestyle. Anguish at not being able to purchase sodas for his sons in a drugstore provided the emotional trigger that launched Williams into civil rights activism in the 1950s.

Williams maintained his job with the Department of Agriculture ...