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.
Matt Miller
Eric W. Carson, MD, professor in the Department of Orthpaedic Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, demonstrates suture technique to high school students last winter as part of the Perry Initiative, a mentorship program aimed at getting young women interested in orthopedics and engineering.
While growing up in Boston’s inner city, Eric Carson didn’t think African Americans, like himself, could become physicians. But not only did he become a physician, he chose to work in orthopedics, a specialty noted for its lack of diversity.
Carson, one of four children raised by a single mother, was bused along with his siblings to more affluent, predominantly white suburbs for elementary and high school. To fill their free time, his mother enrolled them in a variety of activities run by nonprofit organizations such as the Boys & Girls Clubs of America.