Beating the Odds: the Journey of an African-American Microbiologist: From de facto apartheid as a youth to a productive career in research, focused on microbiology and immunology

Abstract

I am an internationally recognized immunologist and microbiologist, who has had the good fortune to contribute significantly to research within my discipline. Before I could do so, I had to escape the confines of the American version of an apartheid system, into which I was born in 1936, near Annapolis, Md. This part of the country was then unabashedly racist and remained so throughout the years of my primary and secondary schooling.