Aside from the University of Chicago honoring him with the degree of Ph. D. in 1907, the world’s greatest scientists in America and Europe have weighed and found the full value of Dr. Chas. H. Turner as a Biologist of the first order in the special fields of neurology and comparative psychology.
Here and abroad scientific students and teachers alike constantly turn for information and references to his writings on the habits and manner of the Burrowing and Honey Bees, the Common Roach, the Mason Wasp, the Ant and several other species of larger sized and more advanced insect vertebrates. Some other of his research articles that have appeared in some of the best magazines of science are Morphology of the Nervous System of the Genus Cypris; Ecological Notes on the Cladocrea and Copspoda of Augusta; the Mushroom Bodies of the Crawfish, Morphology of the Avian Brain and other subjects along these lines. (Extracts from Southern Workman, July 1920 issue, pgs. 324-26).
Negro boys who read these pages will notice that just as it is the colored bees that are willing to drudge day after day in gathering and laying aside bits by bits of the sweetest thing on earth (honey) for future use; so has Dr. Turner (like all present and future youths must do if they wish to gain success in any calling) been willing to patiently and tirelessly plod ahead gathering and adding little by little of the greatest thing on earth (knowledge) to his store of wisdom. Today his research stack has piled up into such a vast heap that he is now able to scatter it into scientific pastures in such aways as to be of the most fertilizing values therein for the enriching of future young minds and for the growing of reputation and fame for himself.
The most original and beneficial researches and discoveries in the American Negro field of chemistry have been made by Prof. G. E. Carver, Director of Agricultural Research in Chemistry at Tuskegee Institute, Tuskegee, Ala. Chief among his twenty and more discovered chemical products that are today being used as practical farm and household necessites are as follows: dressing for canvass shoes, made from Macon County clays; dyes made from dandelion, black oak, wood ashes, sweet gum, willow, swamp-maple, sweet potatoes, pomegranate, peanuts, sage, orange, muscatine grape, onions, velvet beans and tomato vines; cotton-stalk fibre for rope, cordage, mats and carpets; furniture stains made from native clays and vegetables; feathers for millinery purposes, secured from native wild and barn-yard fowls; laundry blues, 20 varieties; okra fibre for paper, rope, cordage, strawboard, matting and carpet; poplar bark for artificial ribbon; Tonic stock feed, made of snap corn, velvet beans, cotton-seed meal, and china berries, containing protein, 14.5 per cent., fats, 4.5;, crude fibre 12, and carbohydrates 52; Ultramarine Dyes, made from Macon County clays and used for cotton, wool, silk, and leather; White and Color Washes, made from clays; Wistaria for basketry work. One of his chemical products that attracted the widest attention was Prof. Carver’s Sweet Potatoes Flour that was successfully used during the World War by the Tuskegee Institute (which has a population around two thousand students and instructors) as a substitute for wheat flour. (Ref. Work’s Negro Year Book, 1918-1919 edition, p. 42).
Quite a number of Colored men and women have graduated in chemistry and physics with high honors from some of the leading universities in America, and are today holding responsible and high salaried positions either as professors in colleges or as consulting chemists in private commercial corporations. Among such professors in colleges are St. Elmo Brady and E. Chandler who have attracted unusual attention to their chemical experiments and for their accurate conclusions have received their Ph. D. degrees from the University of Illinois. Dr. Brady is author of a book on chemistry.
For the past twenty-five years a Colored man by the name of O. W. Collins has been employed by the R. W. Hunt Bureau of Inspection, said to be the largest engineering corporation in America. Mr. Collins is an analytical and consulting chemist for that corporation.
Harry Keelan, a Harvard graduate, during the World War resigned a $300 a month position as consulting chemist in a New York white firm, in order to join some other Colored men in organizing a company for the manufacture of dyes. In this industry he was ably assisted by E. L. Davidson, another Harvard graduate, and the quality of their dyes was of such high grade and standard that their firm was unable to fill the rush orders for their products.
Miss Deborah Henderson graduated from the Central High School, Detroit, Mich., attending the Oberlin College where her scholastic achievements won her the much coveted “key”. Then entering the University of Chicago she attended there until her graduation as a ranking bacteriologist and chemical technician, as well as serving during her senior year as president of the Alpha Kappa Sorority. Miss Henderson is only one among numerous Colored women who have successfully invaded the highest chemical fields. After reaching that stage of advancement, they have experimentally as well as theoretically peeped and peered into many scientific secret lanes and avenues until they learned much of the hidden and inexhaustive mysteries therein. And with the proper encouragements, facilities and surroundings, it is not impossible for some American Colored women scientist some day becoming a second Madame Curie by finally discovering and giving to the world another hidden force of the elements, like Radium, that will greatly benefit humanity and add much to the store of man’s scientific knowledge.
The following quotation is part of an article that appeared in the April 9, 1921 issue of the Chicago Defender:
“In the various fields of learning the race has wrought and has its representatives; but not until now have we had a graduate doctor of metaphysics. The pioneer in this instance is Dr. Adene C. E. Minott, founder and head of the Clio School of Mental Sciences, Inc., 3543 State street, this city.