Day 6 - Ernest Everett Just - Biologist, Zoologist, Cell Man

Source

Born 1883 - Died 1941

A Difficult Start


Ernest E. Just was born in South Carolina. His early life was fraught with difficulties.

When he was four years old, both his father and grandfather died, leaving his mother to raise him and his two siblings alone.

His mother, Mary Matthews Just, took a job teaching at the negro school in the area and spent the summer in the phosphate mines of South Carolina.

While working, she noticed that there was lots of empty land near the mines, and encouraged African Americans to set up homes there. It is believed that the town founded on the land is named for her - Maryville, SC

Kimball Union Academy

Education

Ernest was very bright, and his mother sent him to The Colored Normal Industrial Agricultural and Mechanical College of South Carolina. He did well there, but both Mary and Ernest thought that the education for black people in the south was inferior to what he could get in the north.

When he was sixteen, his mother shipped him to New Hampshire where he attended Kimball Union Academy.


He returned home for a visit after his second year to discover his mother had been buried one hour earlier. He returned to New Hampshire and threw himself into his studies, determined to make sure the trust his mother placed in him was not wasted.

He graduated from Kimball in three years instead of four in 1903 and was at the top of the class.

Just got his undergrad degree at Dartmouth College. He was magna cum laude, and he was even considered to give the commencement speech, but the faculty decided it would be a bit too uncomfortable for the parents and guests to find out that the only black student in the graduating class had won almost every single award and honor the college offered.

A Black Scientist In America

Ernest had the same problem every other black scientist had in the early 1900s. No matter how brilliant or capable, most universities had white faculties and white students, and they were not about to hire a black instructor.

He joined the faculty of Howard University.  Howard did not have sufficient labs or equipment to do the types of research Just wanted to undertake.

Shortly after joining Howard, Just met Frank R. Lillie who was in charge of the Zoology department at the University of Chicago and a director of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA.

Lillie invited Just to spend the summer at the lab in MA. Ernest took him up on it. In fact, he spent the next twenty summers - with one exception apparently - at the MBL.

In 1916, Just achieved a doctorate from the University of Chicago. By that time, he was already becoming famous for his published papers about cells and how their surfaces reacted with each other. He also wrote about the cell's place in evolution, egg fertilization, and how embryos formed.

He was considered a genius in the design of experiments...but no other university in America would hire him.

A Black Scientist In Europe

His work with cells was both brilliant and completely ignored for years in America. Europe was a different matter.

In 1929, he conducted experiments at Anton Dohrn in Naples, Italy.

In 1930 he became the first American to ever be invited to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute.

Between 1929 and 1938, Just visited Europe ten times.

European scientists treated Just like a colleague, and the times he did run into racism abroad, it was usually from Americans traveling in Europe.

Contributions

Ernest Just wrote books, numerous papers, and articles about his observations and experiments on cells. His work is still considered brilliant, and it is the backbone of our modern understanding of cells.

source

Breeding Habits of the Heteroneteis Form of Nereis Limbata at Woods Hole/Mass by Frank R. Lillie and E. E. Just

"This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it."

The Biology of the Cell Surface by Ernest Everet Just

Death

When World War II broke out, Just was at the Station Biologique de Roscoff. The French Government told all of the foreigners to leave but Just stayed to complete his research.

In 1940 the Nazis invaded and Just was put in a POW camp. In 1941 the American government negotiated for his release. He'd fallen ill during his imprisonment, and when he returned home he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He died shortly thereafter.


Ernest Everett Just pioneered work on cells in his day, and his work is still informing modern day scientists.

There is lots more to learn about Ernest Everett Just.

In 1911 he co-founded the first black fraternity, Omega Psi Phi.
In 1996 the US postal system gave him his own stamp. 

There are lots of really long science words and terms and such that Just studied, but this is a thumbnail, not a dissertation.

Thank you, Ernest Just for all the knowledge you contributed to our modern understanding of cellular functions!


-Celebrate Black History Month!

Day 1 - The ABC's of Black History Month

Day 2 - Archie Alphonso Alexander - Mathematician/Engineer

Day 3 - Sarah Boone - Inventor and Domestic Goddess
Day 4 - Charles R. Drew - Blood Man
Day 5 - Mary Beatrice Davidson Kenner - Inventor of The Sanitary Pad

Day 6 - Ernest Everett Just - Biologist, Zoologist, Cell man
Day 7 - Frederick McKinley Jones - The Coolest Man in Modern History

Day 8 - Sarah Goode - A Practical Bed For Small Spaces
Day 9 - William Henry Cling - Did He Invent The Hospital Bed Before Gatch?
Day 10 - Inez Beverly Prosser and Brown V.S. The Board of Education
Day 11 - Jan Ernst Mateliger - Mechanical Engineer/Sole Man
Day 12 - Samuel L. Kountz Jr. - Revolutionized Transplant Surgery
Day 13 - Lewis Howard Latimer - Incandescent Inventor
Day 14 - Marie Van Brittan Brown - Home Security
Day 15 - Norbert Rillieux - Sugar Man
Day 16 - Otis Boykin - He Kept Hearts Beating
Day 17 - Alice H. Parker - Heating It Up!
Day 18 - Lloyd Quarterman - Chemist and Atom Man
Day 19 - Robert F. Flemming Jr. - Guitar Man
Day 20 - Charles S. L. Baker - The Friction Radiator 
Day 21 - Granville T. Woods - The Black Edison
Day 22 - Alfred L. Cralle - Next Time You Have Ice Cream...
Day 23 - Ellen Elgin - Through The Wringer
Day 24 - Dr. Daniel Hale Williams - Holding A Heart In the Palm of His Hands
Day 25 - Benjamin Bradley - Steam Engine Dominance
Day 26 - Elijah McCoy - The Real One
Day 27 - Alexander Miles - Hold The Door, Please!

Adjusting In Mid-sentence: Telling To The Audience You Have Not The One You Wish You Had!

Hotel Florence

I spent most of the week in beautiful Florence, SC.

I enjoy this gig. Eight sets in four days.

I stay at the beautiful Hotel Florence.

Paula Childer's amazing staff drives me all over the area so I won't have to get lost.

The libraries are all unique in their own ways, and the kids and adults are fun.



Some sets I might have eight kids and a handful of adults, and some sets I might have over one hundred.

Summer Rules Apply:

1. Whoever Shows Up Get's Stories.
2. As Long As The Audience Outnumbers Me It's A Show.

Today, Thursday, I had my favorite two sets.

Teen ghost stories. I choose three tales from my spooky arsenal, I get kids from ages eleven to seventeen, and I creep them out.

Well, my noon show started out promising. I got five teens and one young tween. Right before I started, a woman came in with two appropriately aged kids and a three-year-old.

Already I am having the "mom" issue. I don't like telling really scary stories to little kids. There isn't any reason to put creepy unpleasant images into their little heads.

So, I began with Boogin in the Gray Graveyard, which is a Bogle story. My tale is a variant of Lucy Dove by Janice Del Negro.


In the midst of this tale, five more people appear and settle into their seats. They seem to mostly be old enough, so, no problem, but I have one older teen who is acting oddly. She won't look at me and stares out the window. Most likely she is someone who is easily scared and has decided she is just going to cope.

Whenever I scare her, she laughs and hits the girl sitting next to her. Oh, well.

My daughter does body art. This is one of hers.

Second story is the Skeleton Woman. I just realized that I learned this story from Janice the first couple of years I was telling!

The tale is about a woman who eats all the flesh off of her own bones.

Goes all right, but the girl keeps giggling.








Then, just as I am about to start my third story, Mr. Fox - which is essentially about a very charming folkloric serial killer - into the room come fifteen children aged four to nine.

I tell Mr. Fox, but it is the most watered down version of the tale I can manage. Then, because the story has gone so fast, I have time to tell Red, Red lips.

Sigh.

When I encounter sets that don't go as planned for a variety of reasons, I try to step back and assess what happened as clinically as possible. I am my worst critic, and I am always sure it was a horrible set, nobody enjoyed it, and it was a complete failure. Whether true or not that is how it feels.

The questions I use to assess the situation:

1. Did the audience enjoy the set?

The audience says they enjoyed it, jumped, laughed, and had some fun.

One of the kids who was there the whole time, said, "that last story got me."
It was Red, Red, Lips.  I had to laugh.

One of them said, "The first story got me." That was the Lucy Dove tale.

So, I accomplished the first most important task. I facilitated kids having a great time at the library. I also shared some memorable images, interested them in storytelling, and motivated at least one of them to go and check out 398.2 in the library.

2. Did the librarians enjoy it?

Yes, according to them they did enjoy it. They jumped and laughed and had a good time with everyone else. They were thrilled I adjusted on the fly and I was flexible.

3. Did I enjoy it?

Today was a day when storytelling was work, and I ended up doing all of that crafting on my feet thing and rearranging, editing, and modifying that so many performers have to do when things change rapidly. So, reading an inappropriately aged audience and telling them tales as they entered was the job. I think I did it, but it was not as polished and clean as I like sets to be, so I was disappointed in myself.

4. Did I fulfill the contract?

Well, I was supposed to tell ghost stories for teens. Since I didn't have an audience of teens, I didn't feel like I could do that. They did get ghost type stories, so...kinda?

Despite my feeling as if I didn't have a stellar set from my own standards, I fulfilled the contract to the best of my ability, and the librarians thanked me for taking the age of the kids into account as I told the tales.

Three hours later, I had another set at another library.

Twenty-six teenagers.

I went full drippy, gory, with jumps and horrible sound effects just because. Lost two after the first story who decided it was too much. The rest stayed to the bloody end. They were creeped out, screamed a little, exclaimed, "Oh God!" "Oh No!" "Don't look!" hid their faces in their hands, plugged their ears, and one kid hid in his shirt about half the time. They shuddered, jumped, laughed, cringed, shivered, and stared in horror for forty-five minutes.








They loved it.

I feel much better.





Happy Telling

Librarians Have The Best Stories

Blogging has been a very interesting experience for me. As I continue on into the years, I learn more about the insidious way my brain works.

So, I promised to blog about Sydney, but I couldn't think of anything particularly interesting to say about Sydney. Not because I didn't love it. Not because the Conference wasn't fabulous. Not because I didn't absolutely enjoy the sessions I attended, the storytelling I got to hear, the workshop I got to teach, meeting old friends and new. Meeting tellers from new South Wales, and all of the various states of Australia was amazing, and I enjoyed all of the really wonderful things that happened at that conference from the SLAM to the youth tellers. I recommend that if you can get there in 2018 - which is when they will have the next one, you should go.

Other people did all the heavy lifting right after I got home last week when I discovered I was comatose from equal parts exhaustion and jet lag.

Here is a great blog post about what happened at the conference from the blog of 'Storyteller Victoria Australia!'

I also met the wonderfully funny, well published, fascinating author Kate Forsyth, who autographed one of her trilogies to my daughter!

Kate Forsyth

And yes, I got to spend the weekend with that silver tongued fox, Jeff Gere, and his lovely wife Dominique, and once again I was in close quarters with the ever brilliant David Novak.

Jeff Gere

It isn't that I don't have anything to say. It turns out that every now and then I'm just brain dead. My brain has had enough, and it just shuts down, and even though I have lots of thoughts, feelings and...as always...opinions, they get road blocked and nothing will flow. Add the incredibly bizarre election season going on right now, and politics moves into the empty spaces and takes up residence in my thought patterns, blocking any and all hope that I will have any thoughts that are not rage oriented.



So, I had a good time in Sydney, got home, slept almost constantly for three or four days, had a wonderful show at the Jung society that Saturday evening, and started Summer Reading performances on Tuesday.


I have had a blast, as I always do with summer reading. The rules are simple for summer.

1. Whoever shows up gets stories.

2. As long as the audience outnumbers me it is a show.

3. Everything is an adventure, and you never know what might happen.

If you've seen the story 'The Exploding Frog' you'll know what this is!

So, this morning I had a show at a wonderful auditorium. I ended up with an audience of twelve adults and two children. The youngest was nine the older child was twelve. Everyone else, retired or in that neighborhood.

Told adult tales that were appropriate to kids, and a couple of great stories for intergenerational audiences. The kids had a good time, the adults had a good time. It was fun. Sold CDs, always a good sign.

Afterwards, the librarian took me out to lunch. That was the best. There were so many things we talked and laughed about over the course of one and a half hours at the River Room seafood restaurant on the waterfront in Georgetown, SC.


Sheila has been a librarian in Georgetown, SC for forty two years. She has seen some things, let me tell you. The two of us just laughed, thought, talked, and solved all sorts of problems over Asian glazed salmon and an immense bread pudding with bourbon sauce.

I laughed so hard at one point, I had tears coming out of my eyes. So, here are two of the tales she shared with me over lunch.

1. There is a family in their community that is 'as American as you or I', but clearly from China. They are faithful library patrons and the girls just chat up a storm. At one point they came in and there was an elderly Chinese man with them. He smiled and nodded, but would say nothing. The girls explained that he was their grandfather in from China for six months, and that he loved to read, but he couldn't speak a word of English. She asked the girls what sorts of things he liked to read, and they told her after some consultation with him.

Sheila saw that he clearly understood more than he could speak. She immediately contacted another library and set up an exchange program so that she could get books for him written in Chinese the entire time he was in America. He would come into the library as soon as a new offering arrived and stand quietly at Sheila's desk. She'd look up and ask if he'd gotten a notice his book was in and he'd smile and bob his head. She'd go in search of it, and he would check it out. He never uttered a single word to her. He was indeed a lover of reading, and spent his visit reading through his local public library. By the time he left, he made sure his grandchildren told Miss Sheila that he couldn't wait to visit again.

We veered into talking about how important small branches of libraries are to communities, especially places where kids have little access to outside information...I have stories about this as well, but I will save them for another post.  Let us move on to the second story she shared.

2. Sheila lamented that some of our legislators don't seem to see much reason to have libraries. She recalled a recent hearing with the government officials during 'non-profit' day, when all the non-profits are forced to go before the legislature and explain why they should be funded.

An aside here...WTF?

Anyway, they are required to plead their case. One of the House Members, a fellow, stood before this group of people, held up his Apple iPhone and demanded to know why we needed libraries.

"I can get anything I need on my phone!" He told them. "Why should we continue to finance buildings and employ librarians when I have a phone with everything I need at my disposal? All of my children have phones..." he went on and on. Sheila said she just put her head down and raised her hands to her cheeks. She couldn't even look at him.

She felt someone patting her gently on the arm and turned around. A Senator was sitting behind her. He smiled hopefully and said, "Don't worry. It will be all right."

The Head Librarian in the state of South Carolina got up and pointed out that the House Member and his family were quite privileged, and that he could not base his experience on every other person in SC. There are many places in SC where families do not have internet in their homes, or access to books without their community libraries. Apparently this very articulate person had charts, graphs, and stats to back up his comments on rebuttal. 

Still, every librarian in the room was feeling quite defeated. The house member gets to have a say in the budgeting process for the library, the head of libraries does not.

As the librarians were packing up to go, they noted the house member grinning as he began to gather his things only to have his wife storm up to him red faced and about to explode. In a loud voice, she began to harangue him.

"I have never been so embarrassed in all of my life!" She shouted. "Don't you know that every single one of your children has a library card!" She demanded. "I have a library card! How dare you get up there and say something so nonsensical!" She went on and on in a fit of fury and disgust, and he just stood there staring at her wide eyed. "How Dare You!" She thundered.

The librarians were silent as they gathered their things, left the building, and went out to find a place for dinner. Over celebratory drinks they speculated where the house member would be sleeping that night.

Librarians have the best stories!

Happy Summer Reading!