Black History Month 2019 #3 - The Manhattan Project and Our African-American Scientists [View all]

Last edited Thu Feb 14, 2019, 01:30 PM - Edit history (1)

The discovery of nuclear fission by German chemists in 1938, and its theoretical explanation made the development of an atomic bomb a theoretical possibility. In a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt in August 1939, a number of prominent physicists including Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard, warned of Nazi Germany's efforts to produce "extremely powerful bombs of a new type," and urged the United States government to engage in research that would produce the weapon first. The Roosevelt Administration heeded the warning and on October 9, 1941, President Roosevelt approved a crash research program to build an atomic bomb in a program which was often referred to as the Manhattan Project. Approximately 130,000 Americans worked on the project with the vast majority serving as construction workers and plant operators at newly created communities such as Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Hanford, Washington. Drawing on natural resources from around the world including critically important uranium from the Belgian Congo, scientists and technicians, plant operators, military personnel, and construction workers labored around the clock in secrecy to complete the project and build this weapon of mass destruction before Nazi Germany completed its own atomic bomb. Much of the initial research on the U.S. bomb was done in existing laboratory facilities at major universities including Columbia, Princeton, and the largest of the atomic research centers, the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago. In 1941, Executive Order 8802 was signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 25, 1941, to prohibit ethnic or racial discrimination in the federal government. African-Americans flocked to the manufacturing sites of the Manhattan Project as construction workers, laborers, janitors and domestic workers because government jobs paid so well. Over 5,000 African Americans worked in Hanford; over 7,000 worked in Oak Ridge. But they encountered horrific discrimination when it came to housing and basic sustenance. It was a trade-off that many chose to bear.

Although there were very few black scientists and technicians working on the Manhattan project, we were a part of it. I will highlight EIGHTEEN of them, including two women, here.



https://laurenkfoster.wordpress.com/2019/02/06/black-history-month-3-the-manhattan-project/