Chemists Club Winter 2019
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the chemists club Winter 2019 The Uncharted Territory: My Path to Excellence REATHA CLARK KING (SM'60, PHD'63) The Uncharted Territory: To overcome the My Path to Excellence diculties that black ine was uncharted territory when, as a hardworking and eager student in my country school, I sought sharecropper Reatha Clark King (SM’60, PhD’63) better opportunities than our people were experienc- Abridged from the inaugural Department of Chemistry Distinguished Alumna Lecture, delivered 1 June 2018 ing in South Georgia. To overcome the diculties families were facing M that black sharecropper families were facing in the 1930s, black youths needed fate, faith, and encouragement by elders, in the 1930s, mentors, family, and community. In addition, we needed to be guided by our own visions, dreams, and willingness to work hard. youths needed Back then it was common to hear Blacks say that they wanted to go up north. ose who would return home for visits would tell us fate, faith, and about the opportunities for Blacks there. Service in the military was another way our people learned about opportunities for Blacks in oth- encouragement by er places. My mother’s seven brothers served in World War II and later in the Korean War. On their furloughs, they would tell us about their elders, mentors, experiences compared to our circumstances in the South. We Blacks were eager for any news we could get from up north family, and community. about the eorts by the NAACP to get the laws about racial segrega- tion in public services changed. We received this news from friends and relatives who had travelled north, mainly to New York, New Jersey church along a busy highway near Pavo, Georgia. As is typical in South and Chicago, some of the most frequently mentioned destinations for Georgia, this town was so small that you would describe where it was the Great Migration of Black Americans who le the South. located by saying the places it was near—the larger towns nearby like We also read black newspapers, especially the Pittsburgh Courier; Albany, Valdosta, and Moultrie—and, if the listener still could not place also the Chicago Defender, the Kansas City Call, and the Atlanta Daily it, you would mention that it was on the way to Jacksonville or Tallahas- World. We received back issues, and copies would lie around our house see. A large cemetery where several generations of our family have been Images courtesy until we had read every page and the coloring had faded. We enjoyed buried is nearby. My parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents are Reatha Clark King reading about the successes of black people, which encouraged us to buried there, along with my uncles, aunts, and cousins. Because black develop ourselves and get an education. families lived on land owned by the people we worked for, Mt. Zion In every stage of my life, I have been guided by mentors who told Baptist Church was the core of community life for us. It was also my Dr. Reatha Clark King was born April 11, 1938 in Pavo, Georgia. remembered for substantial expansion of the college, as well as increased re- me to have the courage to follow an uncharted path. My community rst school. She received her early education in a one-room schoolhouse at Mt. Zion cruitment of women and minorities. Following a stellar career in research told us to study hard and get an education to get good work out of the Following my sister, who was seventeen months my senior, I started Baptist Church. Aer graduating as valedictorian of Moultrie High and academia, Dr. King spent the next fourteen years in industry as Vice hot sun. e older generation wanted us to use our heads, make good rst grade at Mt. Zion at age four, while our parents worked. My dad School for Negro Youth, she attended Clark College in Atlanta on a schol- President of the General Mills Corporation and President/Executive Di- grades, and take advantage of opportunities that they had been denied worked in the eld, and my mom worked in the homes of white people. arship, where she earned a double BS in chemistry and mathematics. rector of the General Mills Foundation. She has served on the boards of to get better jobs, to send money home, and to share. is indoctrina- I was eager to learn, and Ms. Florence Frazier, who taught all seven A Woodrow Wilson Fellowship brought her to the University of Chicago several corporations and nonprot organizations, including Exxon Mo- tion served me well. grades, let me learn with the other children. I listened, caught on quick- for her MS in Chemistry, which she obtained in 1960. She remained for bil, H. B. Fuller, Wells Fargo, Allina Health Systems, and the American Many people, educated and not, encouraged me to seek excellence ly, and mastered the subject matter, and she advanced me to the next her PhD under Ole Kleppa, graduating in 1963 with a thesis titled “Con- Council on Education, and has been a trustee of Clark Atlanta University, from the time I was very young. My grandmother and father, both il- grade with my schoolmates. She also let me assist students who needed tributions to the ermochemistry of the Laves Phases.” Dr. King then be- Carleton College, and the University of Chicago. She has received many literate, would tell me, “Anything worth doing is worth doing well.” help, so I earned the reputation for being smart—a reputation that I came the rst female Aican American research chemist at the National awards, including the Defender of Democracy Award om the Martin ey did not know sophisticated words like “excellence,” but they did kept through my college years. Bureau of Standards, where she won the Meritorious Publication Award Luther King, Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation, National As- know the dierence between sloppy work and doing it well and with Ms. Frazier was masterful. She was condent, emphatic, and highly for a paper on uoride ame calorimetry. In 1968, Dr. King joined York sociation of Corporate Directors Director of the Year, Exceptional Black distinction. ey loved to say, “hard work never killed anybody.” ey respected by everyone in the community. She would ask our community College (CUNY) as a faculty member, eventually becoming Associate Scientist Award om CIBA-GEIGY, International Citizen Award om encouraged us to be friendly and respect them, to be honest, sincere, to encourage us. She attended church and mingled with us. She was Dean for the Division of Natural Science and Mathematics and Associate the International Leadership Institute, Louis W. Hill, Jr. Fellowship in humble, trustworthy, and—for God’s sake—“Don’t talk about people proud of her students, and she talked about us to others. She told us Dean for Academic Aairs. She earned an MBA om Columbia College Philanthropy, and Ebony Magazine’s Top 50 Black Executives in Corpo- behind their backs.” ese values from my country life have remained to work hard, to do our best, and to get an education, because no one during a sabbatical. In 1977, Dr. King became President of Metropolitan rate America. She has been inducted into the Delta Sigma eta sorority with me throughout my life. could take that away from us. State University in Minneapolis. Her eleven-year tenure in this position is for public service and recognized with fourteen honorary doctorate degrees. My upbringing began at Mt. Zion Baptist Church, a country At the end of each harvest season, black sharecroppers feared that My mother’s main source of income was a maid job earning $18 per week and hand-me-down food and clothes from the families she worked for. To help us all, my sister joined the Army Nurse Corps during her junior year. is meant that she was also enlisting and would have to serve a number of years aer graduation from college. But immediately she began to earn a substantial monthly check, which she used for her college expenses, my expenses at Clark, and to help our mother have some much-needed surgery. My younger sister attended Fisk University. As our family supported each other and overcame the many obstacles of our sharecropper life, my mother’s health problems, as well as those of my father, aunts, and uncles, helped me realize how was still on the cotton—it would weigh more. We were eager about lack of healthcare lowered the quality of life and shortened the lives gathering information about colleges we could later attend, especially of low-income families. Over the years, I came to see why and how those we could apply to for scholarships. Our high school teachers this is a problem for many low-income people of all races. Witness- advised us so when the college recruiters visited our high school, we ing the needs of my own relatives while growing up has made me an they would not get their due. ey feared that the people they worked very active in Mother Easter Baptist Church, which was a tremendous were ready to talk with them. advocate for good public policies, particularly healthcare, housing for would say that they were owed nothing because they had borrowed support for our family. e church community welcomed us with open In September 1954, I le Moultrie on the Trailways bus to attend services, and education. their share before the sale of the harvest. Being illiterate, with no way arms. During these years of my life, I learned so well that love is a sus- Clark College, a Methodist-aliated Historically Black College in At- At Clark, my original idea had been to major in home economics to track what they were owed, black people were at the mercy of an taining resource.