Stories from Black Physicists in Our Collections: Part Two

Here at the American Institute of Physics, we are proud of our oral history interview collection. We have the vast majority of our transcripts online, which is somewhat unusual in the world of oral histories, and it is one of our most-used collections. That being said, back in 2020, we published a post with oral history interviews from Black and African American physicists and were shocked at how few we had.

Since then, the oral history team has been busy with efforts to grow this part of our collection. In this post, we’re featuring a handful of the many oral history interviews that have been added to the collection since 2020. These four scientists all happen to be theoretical physicists: Sylvester James Gates, Jr., Milton Slaughter, Walter Massey, and Chanda Prescod-Weinstein.

For more of our oral histories with Black and African American scientists, please check out our newly published Black and African American Physicists Research Guide , the Resources on Individuals tab. In this guide, you will also find additional archival resources, bibliographies and databases, book recommendations, educational and news resources, reports and statistical data, and research tips.

Sylvester James “Jim” Gates, Jr. is a theoretical physicist currently serving as the Ford Foundation Professor of Physics and Director of the Theoretical Physics Center at Brown University. He received his education in physics from MIT, including two B.Sc. degrees and a Ph.D, and he is best known for his work on supersymmetry, supergravity, and superstring theory. Among his many accolades, he is a past president of the National Society of Black Physicists (NSBP) and the American Physical Society (APS), and he has been a Fellow of the NSBP, the APS, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Institute of Physics in the U.K. In 2013, he became the first African American theoretical physicist elected to the National Academy of Sciences. That same year, he was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Obama. He was also the 2021 Andrew Gemant Award winner.

His 2020 oral history was conducted as he prepared to take the helm of the American Physical Society. He discusses his father’s service in the U.S. Army, his upbringing on various army posts including El Paso and Orlando, and how his interest in physics developed throughout high school. He describes the path his career took, from MIT, where he worked with Jim Young on supersymmetry, to his postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard with Warren Siegel, to his tenure at the University of Maryland, and finally to his current position at Brown. He spends time discussing the broader issue of diversity in physics, and he reflects on assuming leadership of APS during the dual crises of COVID and racial strife in 2020.

Gates’ interview is well worth a full read, but in this excerpt from the end of the interview, he responds to a question about what his argument would be for his relevance as a member of an older generation:

Zierler [interviewer]:

And what’s the counter argument if somebody wants to dismiss you as you’re from another generation, you don’t understand what the situation is now, we respect you, but frankly, your perspective is not relevant, right? Well, your perspective has to be relevant because you’re going to be leading APS. It has to be relevant. So, what’s the counter argument there where you can say, “Actually, what I’ve gone through is not so different from what you’re feeling now.”?

Gates:

Well, David, all I can do is tell people, “Look, when I was your age, I had an Afro bigger than yours,” because it is true. I don’t know if I showed you that picture of me at Caltech.

Zierler:

I’ve seen it. I know it.

Gates:

I have never been someone—except for that very brief time in my life when I was in high school—who thought that my identity as an African American person is something that I shouldn’t celebrate because I do. Wearing the hair is a celebration. Naming a piece of physics after an African word, that’s a celebration. Working with the National Society of Black Physicists and becoming Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy on the “Hilltop”(as Howard is sometimes called) were celebration. All I can tell someone when I encounter such criticism — and I do from time to time — look at the body of work that I’ve done, challenging a Supreme Court Chief Justice. I am someone who has existed in this field when people like me normally don’t. I have mentored an African American who is now a string theorist. There are basically no other versions of me in existence right now. So maybe I know something you don’t. My commitment to making a difference is no less than yours. I have a track record of having made a difference that I would like to compare.

Excerpt from Interview of Sylvester James Gates, Jr. by David Zierler on July 30 and August 3, 2020

Milton Dean Slaughter is a theoretical physicist and educator, with research interests in elementary particle theory, nuclear physics, and phenomenology. He is known for his work increasing the participation of underrepresented minorities in STEM. Dr. Slaughter earned his bachelor’s in Physics (1971) and PhD in Theoretical Physics (1974) from the Louisiana State University, New Orleans (now University of New Orleans, UNO). Currently an affiliate professor of physics at Florida International University, Dr. Slaughter spent much of his academic career as a research professor at the University of New Orleans. In 1999, during his tenure at UNO, he was elected as an APS Fellow “for creating effective programs that attract and educate minority and female physics students and involve historically *black colleges and universities in forefront research.” He has also served as an Executive Committee Member on the APS Forum on Education, Chair of the APS Committee on Minorities in Physics, and Charter Fellow of the National Society of Black Physicists.

Milton Slaughter’s oral history recounts his experience growing up in New Orleans during segregation and the civil rights movement, the influence his mother had on his interest in science, and with his career at Los Alamos National Lab and University of New Orleans. During his time at Los Alamos, Dr. Slaughter worked as a staff scientist in the Theoretical Division, eventually serving as Assistant Theoretical Division Leader for Administration. He also was appointed the division’s affirmative action representative. In 1983, he was selected to be the laboratory-wide HBCU program manager for Los Alamos to enforce the presidential executive order establishing the national Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) program. The quote below from Slaughter’s 2020 oral history interview reflects on his experience during this period at Los Alamos.

Slaughter:

But anyway, so the affirmative action rep at Los Alamos, they’re like thirteen, fourteen group leaders, I gotta go around and talk to them ‘cause I was very serious about this affirmative action stuff. So, first of all they say, “Oh, we don’t have quotas.” It’s not about quotas, it’s about goals. What you gonna do ten years from now or whenever. “Oh, there’s no such thing as black physicists.” I said that’s got nothing to do with black physics. To hell with that. “Oh, we don’t necessarily want nobody from an HBCU whose reputation is too lousy to come here.” I said, “Well, some of the people at the HBCUs are damn good. They missed an opportunity or maybe they had an opportunity and got rejected.”

In your case, a lot of these guys, by the way, are from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, all these doggone places, Cornell, in fact Peter Carruthers came there from Cornell and I said, “You guys have a built-in network, right?” NYU, your school. You had a built-in network, right, of people who might make recommendations for you in this. This black kid, he’s coming from an HBCU, right? Where’s his grapevine?

So, for some of these group leaders, I actually- some of them didn’t give a damn about affirmative action but it did make sense to them about the grapevine because they had utilized it themselves, right? So they could understand about that. Some of the group leaders, I discovered much to my chagrin, were basically racists and it was built-in, will never change, you know. So I said, “The hell with that. That means in the future, I work around them.”

And there were some who were not intrinsically racist. Their problem was certainly like in basic training. They just certainly had—their culture was totally different, right? They just simply couldn’t know. They weren’t informed. And so you work with those guys. And then there were people who really tried to do the right thing and tried to work with you. So, I redid the summer program there at Los Alamos and then we had kids who were not black, but they didn’t have to be black. They could be white, Native American, I don’t care. You can come on in here. But of course the kids you have coming in will tend to be black and the reason why is very simple. The kids who were not black, African American, or Native American, they have other opportunities, so they’re somewhere else, right? They don’t wanna necessarily be in some damn program at Los Alamos even though Los Alamos has a reputation, but they would prefer to be in some summer program at Harvard, Princeton, UCLA, or Berkeley, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign or someplace like that, right? Oh how about working for a company where you make some damn bucks, right?

Zierler:

Sure.

Slaughter:

So I mean that’s just the way it worked out. And that program turned out to be very nice at Los Alamos. Ronald Reagan became president in 1980 and did some idiotic things, but hey, he wasn’t all bad, he did some good things too. And one of the things he did, he actually took a half a million bucks out of the weapons budget. This guy walks up to me like in June of 1981 or something and he walks up to me and he says, “Milt, you’re gonna have to get down here and it’s all for helping this, that, and the other.”

So, I had this program and I figured that out. In fact, I wound up giving out contracts to Howard University, Southern University, and Alabama A&M. In fact, Steve McGuire was one of the recipients actually at Alabama A&M, they all got subcontracts. Things were complicated because we were located in New Mexico, an NGO of the federal government, and also under California state rules. So, it was a mess trying to get anything done. But it got it done and we got money out and spent. So, that’s actually an achievement, something I always felt good about back in Los Alamos as affirmative action rep. Later on, even bigger, was when I was made HBCU project manager for the laboratory to look at all this stuff and whatever you do at the laboratory, not just my division, but every division, right? Including the medical doctors. And I like that. I had my own secretary and they gave me a little bit of power, which I was not afraid to use in terms of getting these people to do what I wanted them to do.

And that worked out quite well. In fact, we held the first conference ever at Los Alamos which had to do with HBCU, historically black college university and stuff, and I invited like 35 people from around the country from the HBCUs, and there was some very good people at these schools, they just didn’t have the opportunity, didn’t have the equipment, and the big deal was to have them meet up with other scientists at Los Alamos who were well established.

Excerpt from Interview of Milton Slaughter by David Zierler on August 6, 2020

Walter Massey is a theoretical physicist and educator who has held such illustrious positions as Director of the National Science Foundation, President of Morehouse College, and President of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He earned his PhD from Washington University in 1966 and went on to hold research positions at Argonne National Laboratory, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Brown University during the 1960s-1970s. In 1979, he returned to Argonne as the Director, which also led him to more leadership positions within science and education organizations like the American Association for the Advancement of Science, National Science Foundation, University of California system, Morehouse College, and others.

In this excerpt of his oral history interview , Massey talks about his memorable first night at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he had recently earned a faculty position, and how he immediately became involved with racial politics on campus.

Massey:

My first night on campus [at Urbana]... I got a call. I was sleeping on the floor, a pallet, I recall, with blankets and stuff. Because my furniture hadn’t arrived. About 12 o’clock, or maybe later, the phone rang, I answered it, and said, “Professor Massey?” I said, I had never been called “professor,” so I was a little hesitant, and I said, “Well, yes, I guess.” He said, “My name is David Addison, and I’m president of the Black Students Association, and they’ve arrested, the university and the police, have arrested 250 black students who were in the Illini Student center. And we’re trying to find faculty members, especially black faculty, who can come help us get them out of jail.” And that began my time at Urbana. So I became a faculty advisor to the Black Students Association. I became the founding chairman of the Black Faculty and Staff Association. There were less than ten tenure track black faculty out of the faculty of over 1000.

And so then I was thrown immediately into all of the racial politics on campus. The university had a program called Project 500. They wanted to get 500 new black students. And they would give them scholarships and special programs, etc. And they brought these students to campus from mostly, from Chicago and Philadelphia. The reason from Philadelphia was because they sent out advanced students, sophomores, juniors, etc, who were already there, black students, to go recruit around the country. And there was one up in Philadelphia who recruited all of these students from Philadelphia to come. But when the new students got there, the things that they felt they had been promised were not the things the university, you know, was offering them. So it led to a lot of unrest on the campus throughout the entire year. I got very much involved with that. Because I was chair of the Black Faculty and Staff Association, I got involved in trying to put together programs for black students, academic and extracurricular programs, all different things. And in those days, protests on campus could get violent. The Black Panthers would come down from Chicago. And people were armed. People would carry guns. And then we had conflicts between the black students from Philadelphia and Chicago, and those in the local community, who felt that they had been shortchanged. They felt that the university had been there forever and hadn’t been recruiting from the local black community. Why would they go to Chicago and Philadelphia?

Also, I was teaching a freshman physics section and I had some of these students in there and I could tell they were not prepared. And that’s when I first got interested in high school science education. Because I could see that the problem was not going to be addressed fully by special classes and tutorial sessions once they arrived at college, but they had to be addressed by improving the quality of science teaching in high school. Or at least that was my theory. That’s what got me involved with pre-college science education.

Zierler:

Did racial politics subsume so much of your attention that it was difficult to keep up with the research?

Massey:

It was beginning to at Urbana. I found that I was just... it was difficult to be as engaged as I was. You know, head of the Black Faculty and Staff Association, advisor to the student-- all of these things. It wasn’t just me. Many black faculty that year or even later, were just burned out. We would call it “burn out” because black faculty were so involved with those issues that it was difficult to keep up their research. And the universities would encourage that kind of engagement because there weren’t that many black faculty, and they wanted faculty to work with students. However, when it became time for tenure, that was not the major factor. The major factor for tenure was going to be your research or teaching, and that was going to cut into your research at a research university. And recommendations for tenure came out of your department, right? Not from the administration. The administration rarely gets tenured deeply involved in early tenure decisions. They act on recommendations from the department. So I had this opportunity, I had an offer to go to Brown, which is another story, and at Brown, I felt I’d have the opportunity, and it did work out, to do both. To do something of substance with respect to racial issues, and maybe with science education, and also do my research. And that really, it happened.

Excerpt from Interview of Walter Massey by David Zierler on July 28, 2020

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is theoretical cosmologist and particle physicist who teaches at the University of New Hampshire in both the Physics and Women’s and Gender Studies departments. While her research is focused on the theoretical, she also has connections to observational astronomy. In addition to her physics research, she focuses on Black feminist science studies, launching the Cite Black Women+ in Physics and Astronomy Bibliography in 2022. Her book, The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred was published in 2021. In 2020, AIP conducted an oral history with her where she discussed her family history, childhood in Los Angeles, education, and early career as well as her work with the National Society of Black Physicists and her thoughts about DEI initiatives in STEM.

Her oral history was conducted in November 2020, near the end of a tumultuous year that was heavily dominated by the Covid-19 global pandemic, protests against police violence and racism, and increased discussions of the impacts of racism on society, including in science. In this excerpt, Dr. Prescod-Weinstein discusses the overall arc of “racial justice in STEM” and the difference between individual success and broader justice. She also discusses the changing demographics of various subfields, the impact of industrial physics, and the foundational importance of addressing systemic racism beyond STEM.

Zierler:

Chanda, I want to ask for my last question looking forward if you see…how well defined you see progress generally in racial justice in STEM. Are there specific markers or feedback mechanisms? To go back to this comment about, you know, is 2020 really so different from 2016, right, where do you see breaks in that narrative so that if we circle back in 2024, hopefully you don’t say, “Actually, 2024 isn’t so different from 2020.” What are the things that you might formulate in terms of assessing progress, in terms of assessing where things are headed where you would be able to say, “The field really is making strides in a positive direction as I understand it”?

Prescod-Weinstein:

I think the interesting thing about this question is that my ideas of what constitutes an intersection of racial justice and like physics have evolved. It’s kind of--

Zierler:

You mean for you personally they’ve evolved.

Prescod-Weinstein:

Yeah, for me personally they’ve evolved, and I think some of this came out in the piece I simultaneously published in Physics World and Physics Today a couple of weeks ago about the ethics of being black in physics. That really… Probably almost nobody picked up on this, but there was an Adrienne Rich reference in it, which I would say, by the way, like Adrienne Rich is in many ways one of my guiding ethical forces in my life. I can’t quote this, so I’m not even going to try, but when Adrienne Rich turned down the National Endowment for the Arts award, right, she basically said that she couldn’t allow her name and her words to be used as a way to kind of wash the American empire clean of its crimes. So she couldn’t take the award.

I think we have to be really careful when we talk about racial justice in science to not think that integrating—we say the word integrating, but we really mean assimilating—that coloring in the physics establishment will not produce racial justice. It will feel like justice for those of us who are here doing the coloring in maybe, because maybe justice feels like, you know, like I’m a homeowner now. I never thought that I would own a home in Cambridge. That wasn’t even a dream I thought to have, but I own a home in between Harvard and MIT, right? That actually really has nothing to do with my professional success. That has more to do with my husband’s parents. But there are many ways that I lived this incredible life. Like I have been invited to give talks in Taiwan. I get to go to Korea every year that there isn’t a pandemic and spend a week looking at art in museums, and all of these amazing things. That might feel like justice because I’m living a good life, but it does not transform the conditions in the community where I grew up, where ICE is kidnapping people off the street.

Zierler:

Right.

Prescod-Weinstein:

And we need to learn to know the difference between personal success and justice. I think the conditions are in some ways getting better, I think particularly in astronomy, and in a sense astronomy is not a subfield of physics. The demographics are changing. Exoplanets is clearly leading the way. I don’t know if that’s because it’s a younger field and so there is less gatekeeping oriented towards what is the tradition in our fields. But I would say exoplanets, planetary science in general, are leading the way. I don’t know if that will change anything on the ground, and so like if you go and you look at what did Particles for Justice say in our Strike for Black Lives call, we specifically, at least once but maybe multiple times, talk about the material conditions under which people live. For me that is a key thing, and I don’t see that being a major part of the conversation yet, which is what is our responsibility as scientists? And I don’t… People immediately are like, “Oh. Well yes, we think a lot about climate change.” But what does it mean to take money from the Department of Defense? People I know and love… Vinny Manoharan, for example, is someone… He’s one of my best friends. He signed my ketubah at my wedding. He also has taken money from the DOD and he knows how I feel about it. He’s also been one of the fiercest advocates for black women in the Harvard physics department, right, partly because I have given him a hard time about all of the things I saw when I was there. It’s to the point where he’s fought so hard he has at times made himself sick.

But I do think that at some point whatever we are doing will not be enough unless we have conversations about what are the power structures that we are plugging into and upholding, unless we have conversations about how our land-grant universities came to exist, what indigenous people aren’t in the room.

You know, one of the things I like about the UNH physics department is that I came and gave two talks that day that Elena invited me. I gave a seminar about my physics, and I gave a talk about ostensibly like an equity, diversity, and inclusion seminar. One of the things that I said was I looked up numbers, and the chances that there is an Abenaki person in the room right now are basically zero, and they were not frightened by that, right? I need the entire community to not only not be frightened by that, but to have a sense of urgency around it, and we’re not there yet. That is the transition that I would like to see, which is asking what are the material conditions under which people live, and to understand that a black physicist plucked out of their community and given better material conditions is not better material conditions for black people.

Zierler:

Black people generally and black people in STEM specifically.

Prescod-Weinstein:

Yeah. I mean I guess like look. My better material conditions don’t un-break my heart. [Laughs] My heart literally… There were police shootings that didn’t get attention this summer.

Zierler:

Of course. Of course.

Prescod-Weinstein:

You know, one of the things that I’ve been… I’ve been going around giving talks that are entitled “The Problem with Diversity and Inclusion.” That’s slide one, and slide two is “What will it do for Jacob Blake’s children?” which is like, you know, I wrote this piece “What’s the Diversity and Inclusion Plan for Tamir Rice?” I think that that’s what it was called. I tried to finish that piece and never could and so finally just sort of published it as it was. Until that’s the conversation, I think we’re not having the right conversation, so I would like people to say it’s not enough to have some outreach program that Jacob Blake’s kids can go to. What is required is that Jacob… The children who are like Jacob Blake’s children never have to witness and experience the trauma that his children experienced because there is no way that your childhood continues after you see something like that. So until black and indigenous and brown children are no longer being robbed of their childhoods, we’re not doing enough.

Excerpt from Interview of Chanda Prescod-Weinstein by David Zierler on November 10, 2020

*Note: We recognize that it is common practice today to capitalize the word Black “in a racial, ethnic or cultural sense, conveying an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black, including those in the African diaspora and within Africa.” (Associated Press ) However, we have reprinted these interview transcript excerpts without changes, including capitalization decisions made by the transcriber.