Roger Arliner Young : Quand la science, le racisme et le sexisme se rencontrent

Written by Joséphine Coadou

Countless studies show that girls are less likely to pursue scientific studies, despite achieving better academic results than their male classmates. The persistence of everyday sexism is largely to blame, including the widespread belief that women are not “made for science,” which implicitly discourages girls from entering these fields.

To encourage future scientists, we have chosen to dedicate this article to Roger Arliner Young, the first African American woman to earn a doctorate in zoology, whose life story is as impressive as it is scandalous.

From Anonymous Student…

Roger Arliner Young was born in 1889 in Clifton Forge, a town she would scarcely know, as her family soon moved to Burgettstown, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Little is known about her youth, except that her family was poor and she had to devote much time and money to caring for her disabled mother.

After high school, she went to Washington to study at Howard University, the most prestigious university for Black Americans at the time. It was not until 1921, as she was finishing her music studies, that she took her first science course, in zoology. Intrigued, she also enrolled in embryology.

At that time, nothing suggested she would embark on a scientific career. Society certainly did not expect it. Historian Olivia A. Scriven notes: “Black women becoming scientists, mathematicians, or engineers lay outside the framework — and acceptance — of what society believed Black women could be.” They were expected instead to become teachers, nurses, or social workers — careers that, according to Scriven, would contribute to racial uplift within society. Roger Arliner Young followed this path initially: when she earned her bachelor’s degree in 1923, she wrote in her yearbook that she intended to become a social worker.

Yet despite her rather average science grades, her professors recognized tremendous potential. Among them was Ernest Everett Just, a prominent Black biologist who chaired the zoology department. He found her so promising that he asked her to become his assistant.

…to Prodigious Assistant

Young arrived at just the right time. Professor Just was no longer as productive as he had once been and had embarked on a lengthy research program with the National Research Council. He urgently needed someone to relieve him of his obligations at Howard and assist with his research.

For her to remain after her bachelor’s degree, she needed to pursue a Master’s in Science. Highly motivated, Just sought a scholarship for her. He wrote to the General Education Board, explaining he needed a “competent assistant” and that Young was perfect for the position; he even argued that a woman would be less likely to abandon him for a medical career.

No funding was granted. The following year, Roger began a master’s degree at the University of Chicago at her own expense. Despite his self-serving motives, Just had not been mistaken about her talent. During her first year, she published a paper in the prestigious journal Science. Studying paramecia (single-celled aquatic organisms) she discovered that disparate parts of their digestive system merge to form a continuous structure.

With this publication, Young became not only the first African American woman to conduct research and be published in the field, but her discovery also earned international recognition. She was even invited to join Sigma Xi, a prestigious honor society that rarely extended such recognition to master’s students. An immensely proud Just praised her technical excellence and called her a “genius of zoology.”

From then on, Young and Just worked closely together. During the academic year, she taught as an assistant professor at Howard. Summers were devoted to research. Beginning in 1927, Just invited her to spend summers at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, a world-renowned institution. There, they studied fertilization in marine organisms and the processes of cellular hydration and dehydration.

Despite her invaluable assistance and undeniable talent, recognition had its limits. Just mentioned her contributions in grant applications but systematically omitted her name from publications.

Institutional Sabotage

Encouraged by her achievements and colleagues’ praise, Young returned to the University of Chicago in 1929 to pursue a doctorate under embryologist Frank Rattray Lillie, a mentor of Just. Her thesis examined the effects of ultraviolet radiation on sea urchin eggs, a project she had begun at Woods Hole.

One might expect Just to lighten her workload so she could focus on her doctorate, but the opposite occurred. That same year, he traveled to Europe seeking funding and appointed her acting head of Howard’s zoology department. In addition to working on her thesis, she had to travel frequently between Chicago and Howard — more than a thousand kilometers apart — to schedule courses, manage discipline and grading, and negotiate with donors. It was impossible to do everything.

In 1930, she failed her defense. The next day, Lillie informed her she was dismissed from the program. She wrote to him explaining the difficulties she faced: “The trouble is that for two years I have tried to carry responsibilities that were not wholly mine and not shared, and the weight has simply exhausted me.” Friends and colleagues supported her with letters, but Lillie refused to reconsider.

Nor was the dismissal painful for Lillie. As a member of the Eugenics Education Society, he believed people of color were genetically inferior to whites.

To him, the failure proved Young had deficient mental health and was unsuited to scientific excellence. In his final letter, he wrote: “I cannot continue to be responsible for your work in any way.” He even wrote to Howard’s president warning about her health.

The shock devastated Young. She left Chicago without leaving an address and disappeared from view for a time.

When the masks fall off

Unable to remain unemployed because of her disabled mother, Young returned to Howard, where she received a cold welcome, especially from Just.

Since Lillie had been Just’s mentor, Young’s failure reflected poorly on him at a time when he faced his own difficulties. In the late 1920s, Howard’s president sought to elevate the university to compete with white institutions. Just was tasked with creating a zoology master’s program and needed white donors convinced of Black scientific excellence. He had hoped Young’s doctorate would serve as powerful publicity. Meanwhile, he traveled extensively seeking donors, disregarding her lack of time.

Instead of encouraging her to try again, he became cold and focused on removing her.

A slow, insidious process began. He scheduled her classes at unusual hours and refused meetings. He issued memos reprimanding her for keeping laboratory equipment too long — equipment she needed for research — or grading too strictly, despite following his own departmental rules. The aim was to collect written evidence of alleged incompetence.

Although she continued summers at Woods Hole and published papers, the increasingly toxic climate made concentration difficult.

In 1935, she confronted Just in a letter: “It seems that you are making deliberate efforts to prevent me from doing research… Such conduct is so opposed to the behavior of a true scientist or the spirit of a real university that for a long time I tried not to believe it was deliberate.”

The letter marked the end of her career at Howard: he dismissed her within the year.

The dismissal shocked her but gave her the impetus to return to the fight for her doctorate. In 1937, she enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania under Lewis Victor Heilbrunn, a biologist she had befriended at Woods Hole. This time, she received the support she needed and earned her doctorate in 1940.

Too Vocal an Activist?

Now Dr. Young, she moved to North Carolina, where she was hired by two universities. Compared with Howard, they were second-tier institutions with limited research resources and lower salaries. Yet she felt the environment was healthier and more welcoming.

Durham seemed relatively progressive for Black residents, supported by Black business leaders. However, the priority lay in economic uplift rather than social advancement and liberation.

In 1944, a Black man was murdered by a white bus driver. Authorities’ indifference motivated Young to become an activist. She was elected secretary of the NAACP and became an AFL organizer for Black tobacco workers.

Her activism soon brought trouble. On July 5, 1946, while taking a bus to meet workers, she was ordered to give up her seat to a white man and move to the back. She refused. Police dragged her off the bus. When the mayor offered to drop charges in exchange for a public apology, she chose to spend several hours in jail instead.

Universities viewed her behavior as subversive. Within a year she was dismissed and forced to leave; historian Christina Greene suggests she was likely blacklisted on the East Coast.

She accepted positions at southern universities but could not hold a job longer than one or two years. Having never been able to save money due to caring for her mother, this instability worsened her finances. To make matters worse, she began losing her sight — her UV experiments at Woods Hole had permanently damaged her eyes.

These hardships took a toll on her mental health. In the late 1950s, she admitted herself to a Mississippi psychiatric hospital.

Roger Arliner Young died on November 9, 1964, in New Orleans.

An Inestimable Loss to Science

Why devote an article to Roger Arliner Young?

To be honest, we discovered her by chance in a Daily Geek Show article listing 36 women scientists who changed the world. Five short lines mentioned her as the first African American woman to earn a doctorate in zoology. Intrigued, we consulted her Wikipedia page, which summarized her academic life in only 500 words.

The only comprehensive, reliable source we found was an excellent BBC article based on academic research. Otherwise, nothing.

Even in death, Roger Arliner Young has been relegated to the background: no archive is dedicated to her. Historians interviewed by the BBC reconstructed her life through the notes and letters of Ernest Everett Just and Frank Rattray Lillie, which, read uncritically, portray a difficult woman with fragile mental health and little importance.

That misses the essential truth. Roger Arliner Young was courageous, persevering, and ambitious, and she spent her life facing relentless headwinds. Less than fifty years after the abolition of slavery, a Black woman earning a doctorate was almost surreal: between 1876 and 1969, of the 650 people of color who earned doctorates in the natural sciences, only 58 were women (historian Wini Warren).

Scholar Sarah Díaz notes: “It took 25 years before she began to break. That is remarkable… but there are limits to what one can endure in terms of oppression and isolation.”

It also overlooks the extraordinary potential recognized in her early years. She made significant scientific discoveries from the start. Imagine what she might have achieved had she not faced racism and sexism, had she been able to prepare her doctorate under normal conditions, had she been given time and resources rather than exploited.

We conclude with the hope that her story inspires you to pursue your ambitions and never give up. As our zoologist so aptly wrote: “Not failure, but low aim is a crime.”