| Henry C. McBay | |
| Birth Date: | May 29, 1914 |
| Birth Place: | Mexia, Texas, United States |
| Workplaces: | University of Atlanta, Morehouse College, Spelman College |
| Alma Mater: | Wiley College, University of Chicago |
| Thesis Title: | "Reactions of Atoms and Free Radicals in Solution" |
| Doctoral Advisor: | Morris S. Kharasch |
Henry Ransom Cecil McBay (May 29, 1914 – 1995) was an American chemist and teacher. McBay won numerous awards for his teaching and mentoring, including the American Chemical Society Award (for Encouraging Disadvantaged Students into Careers in the Chemical Sciences). McBay also co-founded the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE).[1]
Henry Ransom McBay was born on May 29, 1914, in Mexia, Texas. In 1954, McBay married Shirley Ann Mathis, a mathematician and strong advocate for increasing representations of minority students and researchers in academia.[2]
McBay enrolled at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, and paid for his education with scholarships and by working jobs during college. He earned a B.S. degree in 1934. After earning his master's degree in 1936 from Atlanta University, McBay returned to Wiley College so he could help his younger brother and sister pay for college.
In 1940 McBay joined a newly formed research team at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama assigned the task of finding a suitable substitute for jute fiber. Indian shipments of jute, which was used for rope and fabrics for sacks, had ended due to World War II. The Tuskegee team hoped to prove that okra stems would be an effective substitute, but McBay proved that by the time an okra plant had matured, the stems were too brittle. Okra could be harvested for food or for fiber, but not for both.
In 1942 McBay accepted a teaching assistant's position at the University of Chicago and resumed his doctoral studies. This move also kept him out of the U.S. military. In 1944, McBay chose Professor Morris Kharasch as his research advisor. He began to learn very specialized techniques in creating and handling highly explosive compounds that offered great value as chemical building blocks. His dissertation focused on developing new methods of producing compounds from acetyl peroxide and in 1945 he received his doctoral degree from the University of Chicago. His doctoral research was later applied to developing a treatment for prostate cancer.
McBay then returned to Atlanta as an assistant professor at Morehouse College in Atlanta. In 1956, he was appointed chairman of the chemistry department. In 1982 McBay became the Fuller E. Callaway Professor of Chemistry at Atlanta University. McBay would eventually teach for 41 years in the Atlanta University system (Morehouse, Spelman, and Atlanta). In 1990, McBay was appointed as the first Martin Luther King Jr. visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He taught part-time until his death in 1995.[3]
One of McBay's main goals was to pass along his love for chemistry to his students. He regularly demonstrated how two materials could be combined to produce something with completely different properties. One of his frequent demonstrations combined a metallic poison, sodium, with a gaseous poison, chlorine, to produce table salt. He wanted his students to share his fascination with such processes, which he believed to be minor miracles. He mentored dozens of students from historically black colleges and universities who ultimately earned doctoral degrees.[4]
In 1951, he developed a chemistry education program in Liberia on behalf of the United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
(This novel is a fictionalization based on real-life events from Henry McBay's early years growing up in Mexia, Texas, and first attending Wiley College. The main character, "Moose O'Malley," is based on Henry McBay; the town of "Knox Plains, TX" is based on Mexia, TX; and "Rio Vista State College" is based on Wiley College. Most of the incidents in the book are based on actual events that either happened to Henry directly or he about from others during the time he grew up in Mexia and attended Wiley.)