The blockbuster film about NASA's human computers, Hidden Figures, made famous the black women scientists Mary Jackson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Katherine Johnson. There are so many other black women scientists who also deserve a spotlight, however.

1. Celebrating Black
Women Scientists
BY DEE POKU
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2. Intro
The blockbuster film about
NASA's human computers, Hidden
Figures, made famous the black
women scientists Mary Jackson,
Dorothy Vaughan, and Katherine
Johnson. There are so many other
black women scientists who also
deserve a spotlight, however.
HERE ARE A FEW...

3. Mamie Phipps Clark
A social psychologist, Mamie was born in 1917 to her
physician father and homemaker mother in Arkansas.
After receiving various scholarship opportunities, she
selected Howard University as her alma mater in
1934. However, she was later convinced to pursue her
interests in the development of children by switching
to a psychology major.
She graduated from Howard University magna cum
laude in 1938, continued her schooling to receive her
master's there, also in psychology, and then later got
her PhD in 1943 from Columbia University, becoming
the first black woman to receive a psychology
doctorate there.

4. Joycelyn Elders, M.D.
Born Minnie Lee Jones in Arkansas in 1933 to sharecroppers,
Minnie graduated valedictorian and went to college in
Little Rock, the first of her family to do so. There she
changed her name, selecting Minnie Joycelyn Lee, later
dropping her first name. She received her B.S. in Biology in
1952 from Philander Smith College. In 1953, she joined the
U.S. Army's Women's Medical Specialist Corps. Using the
G.I. Bill's assistance, she received her M.D. from the
University of Arkansas's Medical School in 1960. She then
received M.S. in Biochemistry in 1967. She became the first
to receive board certification in the state of Arkansas as a
pediatric endocrinologist in 1978. In 1993, President Bill
Clinton appointed her as the Surgeon General of the
United States, the first African American to hold the place.

5. There are so many exceptional black women scientists. In 1864,
Rebecca Lee Crumpler was the first African American woman to
earn a Doctorate of Medicine in the United States. In 1947, the
first African American woman to achieve a PhD in chemistry was
Marie Maynard Daly. These and so many more deserve
recognition.

6. Thank you!
Dee Poku
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