During WWII, the United States government’s secret program to build an atomic bomb (the Manhattan Project) employed over 500,000 people. There were janitors and maids among the engineers, scientists, and chemists. These workers included African-American men and women. Some were only able to work as laborers, cooks, and maids at the project’s rural manufacturing sites in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Hanford, Washington.
According to History.com, the project’s urban research centers at the Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory and Columbia University in New York had Black scientists who helped develop the two atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, effectively ending the war.
William Knox was one of approximately 12 Black scientists who worked as researchers on the team that developed the technology for the atomic bomb. He was the Manhattan Project’s only Black supervisor.
He is remembered today not only for his role in the development of the atomic bomb, but also for being one of a few Black scientists who transferred their wartime experience into private industry, as reported by BlackPast. Following his Manhattan project work, Knox worked as a research scientist for Eastman Kodak in Rochester, New York.
Coming from a low-income family, he was taught the value of education early in life. Knox was the eldest of five children born in 1904 in Massachusetts, United States. In North Carolina, his grandfather was a slave. His father, William Knox Sr., worked as a clerk for the United States Postal Service in New Bedford.
He and his brothers were academic standouts, with all four attending Harvard University. Knox graduated from Harvard in 1925 as one of only six Black students in his graduating class. He was instrumental in putting an end to discrimination on the basis of race or religion at Harvard. Knox left Harvard to become a teacher. In 1928, he received a master’s degree in chemical engineering from MIT and briefly attended Howard University before returning to MIT to complete a Ph.D. with a focus on the absorption of light by nitrogen tetroxide.
Knox went on to teach at North Carolina A&T State University before becoming the head of chemistry at Talladega College in Alabama. During this time, his two brothers, Larry and Clinton, both earned doctorates, with Larry studying chemistry and later joining Knox on the Manhattan Project. Clinton, on the other hand, was the first African-American secretary to the US Mission to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and a former US Ambassador to Dahomey (Benin) and Haiti. Clinton made headlines in 1973 when he was held hostage in Haiti for 17 hours by revolutionaries demanding money and the release of some political prisoners.
Manhattan Project
Knox contacted Willard Libby (a Nobel laureate) in 1942 and asked to join his war work at Columbia University in New York City. The following year, Knox joined the Manhattan Project, working on “how to use uranium hexafluoride (UF6), a highly corrosive gas, to separate isotopes and obtain the U-235 isotope required for a nuclear weapon,” according to Chemistry World.
Knox was appointed as the corrosion division’s supervisor, making him the project’s only Black supervisor. He was able to get a job as a research scientist for Eastman Kodak in 1945 because of his work in the corrosion division, where he received 21 patents in 25 years and became a coatings expert. Knox left Kodak in 1970 to return to teaching at North Carolina A&T. He left the company in 1973.
Prior to his death on July 9, 1995, leaving behind a wife and a daughter, he fought for the rights of his fellow Blacks, even becoming an active member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which had been of enormous assistance to him during his time at Harvard.