Roger Arliner Young

Roger Arliner Young (born August 20, 1899, Clifton Forge, Virginia, U.S.—died November 9, 1964, New Orleans, Louisiana) was an American zoologist and social activist. Young was the first Black woman to earn a doctorate in zoology in the United States.

Early life and academic beginnings

Young was born in Virginia to a mother who worked as a housekeeper and a father who labored as a coal miner. Her mother was frequently ill, and Young spent much of her life caring for her. Young enrolled at Howard University in Washington, D.C., in 1916 with the aim of studying music, but after taking several biology courses, she pivoted to science in 1921. In 1923 she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in biology.

Entry into academia and scientific research

Howard professor and zoologist Ernest Everett Just persuaded Young to accept a position as an assistant professor of zoology at Howard soon after her graduation, although she had intended to pursue a career in social services. Just would eventually enlist her to help run the school’s zoology department. In 1924 Young began studying at the University of Chicago for her master’s degree. In the course of her research there, she authored a paper entitled “On the Excretory Apparatus in Paramecium” that examined the morphology of the unicellular organism Paramecium caudatum. The publication of the article in the journal Science made Young the first Black woman to author a paper for the journal. She was elected to the honorary science research society Sigma Xi while at the university. In 1926 Young graduated from the university with a master’s degree in zoology.

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In collaboration with Just, Young next spent several summers conducting research at the Marine Biological Laboratory located in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, focusing on the effects of ultraviolet radiation on sea urchin eggs. She was the first Black woman to engage in research at the institution; Just had been the first Black man to undertake research there. When Just began pursuing his own research in Europe beginning in early 1929, Young served as the acting head of the zoology department at Howard University.

Persevering in academia amid racial prejudice

In 1929 Young enrolled in a doctoral program in zoology at the University of Chicago. However, her concurrent responsibilities as an assistant professor and zoology department chair at Howard impeded her studies, and she did not pass her doctoral qualifying exam. Subsequently, her mentor at the University of Chicago, the zoologist Frank Rattray Lillie, dismissed her from the school’s Ph.D. program. While her lack of success at the university has been attributed to the contemporary racialized political economy of institutions and the gendered division of scientific labor, scholars have also argued that her expulsion may have hinged on Lillie’s racial views, as he was involved with the Eugenics Education Society and also advised the Eugenics Committee of the United States.

Young returned to Howard, where her relationship with Just soured—which some scholars attribute to her failure at the University of Chicago. After Just fired Young in 1936, she enrolled for her Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania, studying the effects of radiation on the eggs of marine animals. In 1940 she achieved her doctorate in zoology with the guidance of biologist Lewis Victor Heilbrunn, becoming the first Black woman in the U.S. to receive a Ph.D. in the field. Her degree made her one of only 58 Black women to earn a doctorate in the natural sciences between 1876 and 1969. In 1940 Young joined the staff of the North Carolina College for Negroes (NCC), which has since been renamed the North Carolina Central University, as an assistant professor. At this institution, she was relegated to exclusively teaching, as the school did not have the funding to support research. Two years later, she migrated to Shaw University in Raleigh as the biology department head.

Activism and academic marginalization

Along with her career in science, Young devoted herself to social justice advocacy efforts in her new home. She served as secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chapter in Durham, North Carolina, and worked as an organizer for the American Federation of Labor, which sought to unionize workers. She also organized members of the Tobacco Workers International Union and assisted with voter registration efforts. In 1946 Young was arrested for refusing to yield her seat at the front of a bus to a white man, foreshadowing the bus protests and boycotts that would later fuel the American civil rights movement. Community members banded together to request her release, and one benefactor paid her bail.

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Following her arrest, she began working once more at NCC but was fired soon afterward. After her dismissal, Young found it difficult to gain steady employment as a scientist. Historians have suggested that universities blacklisted her out of fear of her political organizing efforts. She went through a professional lull, working briefly at Jackson College for Negro Teachers (Jackson State University) and a number of other Southern colleges.

Later life and legacy

Compounding Young’s professional woes, her eyesight began to fade with age, plagued by the ultraviolet light experiments she had conducted in the past. Throughout her life, Young had struggled with mental illness, and the issue intensified as she faced health problems, financial troubles, the loss of her mother, and the likely blacklist against her at academic institutions. In the late 1950s she checked herself into the Mississippi State Asylum and remained there until her release in 1962. She worked as a lecturer at Southern University until her death in New Orleans at the age of 65.

Young’s commitment to science and her resilience in the face of the racism and sexism of her time were commemorated in a 2005 U.S. congressional resolution that also honored four other Black women in science. The Roger Arliner Young (RAY) Fellowship Program, which supports recent college graduates from underrepresented backgrounds in launching careers in conservation and clean energy, was instituted in her name.