Chester Middlebrook Pierce ((1927-03-04)March 4, 1927 – (2016-09-23)September 23, 2016) was an American psychiatrist and tenured professor of education and psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
Pierce was the first African American college football athlete to perform on the playing field of a predominantly-white university versus an all-white team below the Mason–Dixon.
[5] Pierce was a Commander in the U.S. Navy and later a senior consultant to multiple different health-related organizations, and part of 22 editorial boards.
He was a consultant for the Children's Television Network, the Surgeon General of the U.S. Air Force, the US Arctic Research Commission, the Peace Corps, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
From 2001-2004 he was on the Carter Center Mental Health Task force and a founding president of the Black Psychiatrists of America.
Dr. Pierce also served on faculty at the University of Oklahoma in the Department of Psychiatry, Neurology, and Behavioral Sciences beginning in 1960.
There he co-authored a paper on the drugging of an elephant with LSD with Louis Jolyon West, who worked with the MK-ULTRA program.
Pierce's role in the 1947 Harvard vs University of Virginia game, as the first black college football player to compete against an all-white team south of the Mason-Dixon Line, inspired the 2019 children's book Follow Chester!