On #ShutDownStem and #AmplifyBlackSTEM
We’re a little late writing this, but last week we took part in #ShutDownSTEM and spent some time learning and researching about Black botanists.
First, it’s important to remember that the history of academia, and botany in particular, is pretty darn racist. A lot of plant common names (and some scientific names) are horribly racist. Not to mention that a lot of specimen collections were conducted using slave labor or the infrastructure of slavery and oppression. We as botanists can’t ignore that or pretend that it doesn’t affect people to this day. There are disproportionately few Black people in STEM, and that’s a problem.
But Black people have always been important in botany, both in research and in agriculture and ethnobotany, which, as you guys know, we’re pretty excited about on this blog. One of the most well-known examples of this is with upland rice growing. Oryza glaberrima, one of the most common species of rice, was domesticated in West Africa 2000-3000 years ago, and still grown there today. It’s hardier than Asian rice, and tastes really good. If you’ve seen the post recently where they show how rice could be braided into a Black girl’s hair to transport it, then you have seen one of the key theories for how this species came to the Americas. Unfortunately, the name of whoever first brought this species across the ocean has been lost. In Suriname and Jamaica, this species was essential to the survival of people who escaped from slavery and brought with them the agricultural knowledge of West African peoples.
Probably the historical Black botanist that most of us know best is George Washington Carver. I’ve actually held some of the bryophyte specimens that he collected in Iowa! Carver was born into slavery, kidnapped, and lost to his family at an early age but eventually became the first Black student at Iowa State University. Living in Iowa, you see his name a lot! Although he has a number of botanical and mycological collections and even discovered some undescribed species of fungi (which now bear his name) Carver is best known for his work with legumes as a professor at Tuskeegee University (then the Tuskeegee Institute), including studying fungal infections in soybeans and the economic uses of peanuts.
Another historical Black botanist of great importance was Marie Clark Taylor, who was the first woman (of any race) to obtain a PhD from Fordham University in a STEM field. She primarily studied light-mediated development of plants, and after serving in WWII, later went on to be a university instructor at Howard University and teach for NSF programs.
For those of you excited about mycology, O’Neil Ray Collins studied mating types in the myxomycetes, the work for which he is probably best known. He also served as Associate Dean of graduate students at U.C. Berkeley.
There are a lot of really exciting modern works by Black botanists and ecologists, too! Particularly, I would suggest looking at the work of Dr. Bryan Dewsbury, known for his research on seagrass (and the Botany 2020 convention speaker this year!) I’d also point you towards Dr. Tiara Moore, a biodiversity research whose work includes the studies of macroalgae, especially in relation to biodiversity in the communities in which they live. We often post about Tanzanian plants, so we’d also like to direct you towards the Tanzanian researcher Dr. Joseph Ndunguru, and Ugandan Dr. Titus Alicai, who study casava viruses. A lot of the time, researchers from lower and middle income countries go unnoticed - don’t ignore their research if it’s in your area of study! Finally, i’d like to highlight the brilliant Tanisha Williams, who was at UConn when I met her, working with Panicum virgatum, a grass we might post about on here sometime because it’s really interesting.
