SCH4U0

The Oak Ridge Story Assignment

Between 1942 and 1946, the U.S. government conducted secret research to develop an atomic bomb, which was the result
of a nuclear reaction. The first of this type of bomb was tremendously exothermic, releasing the equivalent of 20,000 tons
of TNT.

Learning Goal

In this assignment we will learn about the Manhattan Project and some of the key figures involved with it. We will also
learn about the historical prevalence of racism in the scientific endeavour, and its impacts on society.

Task Requirement

In this assignment, you will watch a short video and read an article (attached at the end of this document) related to the
U.S. Government’s pursuit of the atomic bomb. You will use these two resources to complete the following questions.

Video Questions

1. What is “fission”?
2. What event motivated Einstein to send a letter to President Roosevelt?
3. Who was another famous scientist named in the video who was asked to work on developing an atomic bomb?
4. What was the name given to the atomic bomb project?
5. What was the primary mission of Oak Ridge?
6. What two elements could be used to create the atomic bomb?
7. What problem were the scientists facing with one of the elements?

Article Questions

1. What was Ernest Wilkins working on in the Manhattan Project?

2. What obstacles did he face with the project?

Article Reflection Question:

Over the course of history, many scientists like Wilkins have been “sidelined” because of their ethnicity. In a paragraph
(or more) describe what you think it will take to make the scientific endeavour more equitable and explain how this
recommendation(s) will help.

Success Criteria
Mastered Mastering Accomplishing Developing Emerging Remedial
I can communicate clearly and effectively in writing.
I can describe key aspects of the Manhattan project and some of
the key scientists, and offer an insightful commentary on this topic

Overall Achievement
100% 98% 91% 84% 78% 75% 71% 68% 65% 61% 58% 55% 51% <50%

Self-Reflection (to be completed after assessment) – using the feedback in your assignment, what can you focus on improving?
The Unsung African American Scientists of the Manhattan Project
By Farrell Evans (adapted and abridged by A. D’Souza)
May 17, 2021

During the height of World War II between 1942 and 1945, the U.S. government’s top-secret program to build an atomic
bomb, code-named the Manhattan Project, cumulatively employed some 600,000 people, including scientists, technicians,
janitors, engineers, chemists, maids and day laborers. While rarely acknowledged, African American men and women were
among them—their ranks bolstered by greater wartime employment opportunities and President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s
Executive Order 8802 of 1941 outlawing racial discrimination in the defense industries.

At the project’s rural production sites in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and Hanford, Washington, Black workers were relegated to
mostly menial jobs like janitors, cooks and laborers, regardless of education or experience. But in the project’s urban
research centers—the Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory and at Columbia University in New York—several Black scientists
were able to play key roles in the development of the two atomic bombs that were released on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in
August 1945, effectively ending the war. According to the Atomic Heritage Foundation, at least 12 Black chemists and
physicists participated in primary research at the Metallurgical lab, a small fraction of the more than 400 scientists,
technicians and laboratory staff members tasked with designing a method of plutonium production that could fuel a nuclear
reaction.

Decent Pay, Segregated Facilities

Situated in the South, where Jim Crow segregation was in full force during the war, the
rural community of Oak Ridge ballooned as the Manhattan Project production facility
grew. Black workers, drawn to the high pay and free housing advertised at the site,
filled menial roles in the Tennessee site, only to be housed in groups of five or six in
hutments, 16 x 16-foot plywood structures that had shutter windows, one stove and no
plumbing. Women were segregated from men, even if they were married. “There are
few other areas of the South where the plight of Negros, as compared with that of their
white neighbors, is as wretched as it is here,” reported
Enoc Waters, a columnist for the Chicago Defender.

J. Ernest Wilkins and Other Black Scientists

In 1944, a 21-year-old African American mathematician named Ernest Wilkins joined the team
at the Metallurgical Laboratory. A child prodigy who had entered the University of Chicago at
the age of 13, Wilkins earned his bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D. degrees in six years—
becoming, at the time, one of the one half of 1 percent of Black men in America with Ph.Ds.
Yet after graduation he received no job offers from any major research institutions; he taught
at the Tuskegee Institute before being recruited to work on the Manhattan Project.
At the Metallurgical Laboratory, Wilkins researched neutron energy, reactor physics and engineering with two prominent
European-born scientists, Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard. Together they did ground-breaking work in the movement of
subatomic particles. But when his team was transferred in 1944 to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, a Manhattan Project site where
the X-10 Graphite Reactor was being built, Wilkins was left behind because he was Black. Edward Teller, a scientist at the
Columbia University complex, wrote to the War Research department in an attempt to recruit him to the work in New York.
"He is a colored man and since Wigner's group is moving to (Oak Ridge) it is not possible for him to continue work with that
group. I think that it might be a good idea to secure his services for our work," Teller said. He did not go to New York.

Black scientists at the Metallurgical Lab and Columbia University included, among others: Edwin R. Russell, a research
chemist focused on isolating and extracting plutonium-239 from uranium; Moddie Taylor, a chemist who analyzed the
chemical properties of rare earth metals; Ralph Gardner-Chavis, a chemist who, along with Wilkins, worked closely with
Enrico Fermi; George Warren Reed, who researched fission yields of uranium and thorium; Lloyd Quarterman, a chemist
who worked on distilling Uranium-235; the Harvard-educated brothers Lawrence and William Knox, chemists who
researched the effects of the bomb and separation of the uranium isotope, respectively; chemists Harold Delaney and
Benjamin Scott and physicist Jasper Jeffries.

Advocating Peaceful Use of the Atomic Bomb

Wilkins and Jeffries were two of 70 Manhattan Project scientists who signed a petition urging President Harry S. Truman not
to use the atomic bomb on Japan without first demonstrating its power and giving Japan the option to surrender. But
Truman never saw the petition, which didn’t become widely known about until it was declassified in 1961.

At the Met Lab, Wilkins and Jeffries had joined the Atomic Scientists of Chicago, which was founded in 1945 to address the
moral and social responsibilities of scientists regarding the use of the atomic bomb. In 1947, Jeffries gave a speech to the
American Veterans Committee, urging for the peaceful use of the atomic bomb. “The best way to assure peaceful uses of
atomic energy is to banish war,” he said. Jeffries argued the presence of the atomic bomb necessitated the need for a
strong world government and a United Nations that would help moderate the development of atomic weapons in many
countries.
A Commitment to Science Education

After World War II, Wilkins worked for a decade as a mathematician

at the United Nuclear Corporation. Later he went on to distinguished
professorships at two historically Black colleges, Howard University
and Clark Atlanta University, where he retired in 2003. He served as
president of the American Nuclear Society from 1974 to 1975. Many
of his Black colleagues, including Jeffries, also spent years following
World War II at Black colleges, where they nurtured generations of
Black scientists. In 1958, at the same time of the passage of the
National Defense Education Act, which funded science education for all Americans, Wilkins worked with the National Urban
League to establish a program for African American scientists.

When he died in 2011 at the age of 87, Wilkins had authored more than 100 scholarly papers. According to Shane Landrum,
a historian of Black atomic scientists, the work of Wilkins and other Black Manhattan Project scientists, along with their
white and immigrant colleagues, changed the “course of the war and the role of science in American politics.”