A Zoology Genius

Roger Arliner Young, the first Black woman zoologist

Roger Arliner Young’s life began and ended in poverty, but in between she was a groundbreaking research scientist and professor. I wish I could say she enjoyed a long, happy career — and had she been a white man she surely would have — but her life and work were marred by racism and sexism.

Roger was born in Clifton Forge, Virginia in 1899, and her family soon moved to Pennsylvania. Her father was a coal miner and her mother a housekeeper who had become disabled. Most of their money went to caring for her mother. Roger continued to be her mother’s sole financial provider throughout her life.

Roger enrolled at Howard University in Washington, D.C. in 1916 to study music. It wasn’t until 1921 that she took her first science course: general zoology. She couldn’t get enough. Next came a class in vertebrate and invertebrate embryology. Roger didn’t have the best grades, but Ernest Everett Just, head of the zoology department, saw something promising in Young beyond what tests could measure. She planned to go into social services after graduating in 1923, but Ernest offered her a job as his assistant professor and research assistant. He needed her help to shoulder his university duties so he could focus on his own research.