You know the story of the brilliant chemist Percy Julian, right? The Alabama-born grandson of a man who d had fingers amputated as punishment for learning to read and write while enslaved, his discoveries led to everything from water-based paint and a treatment for glaucoma, to firefighting foam that saved numerous lives in World War II. If you ve used a birth control pill for family planning, you ve benefited from his work. There s a high school named for him in Chicago, and a middle school in Oak Park, so his remarkable life should be familiar, but on the chance that it s not as it wasn t for me or most folks I asked PBS is offering a free stream of
PBS Airdate: February 6, 2007
NARRATOR: 1939: A chemist at a midwestern paint company makes a startling discovery, one that could improve the health of millions of people. The company wants him to stick to making paint, but this man has always gone his own way. He was the grandson of Alabama slaves, yet he went on to become one of America s great scientists.
HELEN PRINTY (Julian Laboratories Chemist) : He had to fight to overcome the odds of being a black man in America.
JOHN KENLY SMITH (Historian) : The chemical world was a club, and outsiders were not really all that welcome.
PETER WALTON (Julian Laboratories Employee) : We lived, for the most part, in a highly stressed, very competitive environment.