Black History
Ernest Everett Just, NAACP’s First Spingarn Medalist, Approached Experiments with the Eyes of an Artist
As a scientist, it is said that Ernest Everett Just (1883–1941) “saw the whole, where others saw only parts. He noticed details others failed to see” and Dr. Charles Drew had referred to Just as “a biologist of unusual skill and the greatest of our original thinkers in the field.” Such was his reputation as a young scientist, in 1915, he became the NAACP’s first recipient of the Spingarn Medal.
By Tamara Shiloh
Known for his pioneering work in the physiology of development, specifically in fertilization, Ernest Everett Just (1883–1941) was an African American biologist and educator with a legacy of accomplishments that followed him long after his death.
Just was an experimental embryologist, a medical professional specializing in the study of reproduction. He was renowned for his attention to detail in conducting experiments on how sealife and invertebrate species like spiders, worms, lobsters reproduced. He believed also that in conducting research, the surface of cells deserved as much, if not more, study than the nucleus.
He was involved in research at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass., and the Stazione Zoologica in Naples, Italy.
As a scientist, it is said that Just “saw the whole, where others saw only parts. He noticed details others failed to see” and Dr. Charles Drew had referred to Just as “a biologist of unusual skill and the greatest of our original thinkers in the field.”
Such was his reputation as a young scientist, in 1915, he became the NAACP’s first recipient of the Spingarn Medal.
Born in Charleston, S.C., Just’s early education took place in the small school his mother founded and directed. At age 12, he attended the Colored Normal Industrial Agricultural and Mechanics College at Orangeburg (now South Carolina State College). He graduated with a Licentiate of Instruction. This meant he was certified to teach in any Black school in South Carolina. He was 15 at that time.
But Just had no interest in teaching then. Instead. he traveled north with the goal of attending Kimball Union Academy in Meriden, N.H., to study classical music. His focus, however, would change once later enrolling at Dartmouth College where he developed an interest in biology after reading a paper on fertilization and egg development. He graduated in 1907, the only magna cum laude in his class, and soon after joined the English faculty at Howard University.
By 1910, Just was asked to take over the Biology Department, teaching physiology. Soon after, he became the first head of the new Department of Zoology and stopped teaching English courses altogether.
As a scientist, it is said that Just “saw the whole, where others saw only parts. He noticed details others failed to see.”
He persisted in his research despite the discrimination and limitations imposed on him as a Black man.
Just was a Julius Rosenwald Fellow in Biology of the National Research Council (1920–1931). This afforded him the opportunity to work in Europe when racial discrimination hindered his opportunities in the United States. It was also the time when he penned several research papers, including the 1924 publication “General Cytology.”
Just married high school teacher Ethel Highwarden in 1912. The couple had three children prior to their divorce in 1939. He then married Hedwig Schnetzler, a philosophy student he met in Berlin. In 1940, the German Nazis imprisoned Just in a camp. Schnetzler’s father, however, was instrumental in his release.
Just died the following year of pancreatic cancer in Wash., D.C.
Encourage young readers to discover how Just’s keen observations of sea creatures revealed new insights about egg cells and the origins of life in “The Vast Wonder of the World: Biologist Ernest Everett Just” by Melina Mangal and Luisa Uribe.
