Gloria Long Anderson (born November 5, 1938) is the Fuller E. Callaway Professor of Chemistry at Morris Brown College, and its vice president for academic affairs.
[1] She has served as interim president of Morris Brown, and as vice chair of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
She was a pioneer in the field of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and is known for her studies of fluorine-19 and solid rocket propellants.
In an interview with Jeanette E. Brown, she explains that she did not feel different, despite being the only girl, because "I mostly played sports along with them, like basketball, softball, and that kind of stuff.
[8] Later, both her parents worked at the Pine Bluff Arsenal, her mother in the Armament Division and her father as a janitor.
[6] Growing up, she was expected to help with farm work, and years later, explained: "In those days we didn't know we were living in poverty.
[6] They allowed her to start elementary school at the age of four ("they didn't check very carefully in those days"[8]), by which time she had already learned to read.
[4] She explained that the teachers "pushed us to succeed, to excel, because they had a vested interest in turning out successful, well-educated students.
[6] Very few jobs were available for African American women in Altheimer, so Anderson chose to attend college, hoping to pursue a career.
[8] Anderson started studying at the Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical, and Normal College, a state-supported school for African Americans.
[5][8][4] Upon her marriage to Leonard Sinclair Anderson in 1960,[10] she almost dropped out of the program due to financial difficulty, despite the fellowship.
[6] Anderson earned her master's degree in organic chemistry at Atlanta in 1961, with a thesis supervised by Dr. Huggins on a novel synthesis process of butadiene, titled: "Studies on 1-(4-Methylphenyl)-1,3-Butadiene".
Anderson began her doctoral studies at the University of Chicago (McBay's alma mater) in 1965, and received a research and teaching assistantship.
[6] She tutored white women chemistry students in her first year, but decided to focus on herself when she realized that, due to the prevalent racism of the time, they had advantages she did not have.
[6] Because of this, Anderson spent the summer looking for a job in Chicago, and poring through her physical organic chemistry textbook.
She later received a phone call from the University of Chicago, with a job offer to work with Dr. Leon Stock as a research assistant.
[6] To test her skills, he set her the assignment which none of his students had so far managed to complete: to make 9-fluora-anthracene from a procedure detailed in a French paper.
[6] She had enjoyed her experience in Dr. Stock's lab, so she continued her research with him, working on the nuclear magnetic resonance and CF infrared frequency shifts of fluorine-19, and published at least one paper before she had completed her dissertation (which they wrote "over the weekend").
[6][11] In 1968, Anderson chose to conduct her post-doctoral research at a historically Black college ("it didn't make a difference which one"[6]) in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in April of that year, and considered this her contribution to the American civil rights movement.
[8] She knew at the time that this choice was considered by some of her friends to be "professional suicide", and she herself believes that she could have accomplished much more in a different setting.
"[6] On Dr McBay's advice, Anderson applied for the position of chair at Morris Brown College's department of chemistry in Atlanta.
"[6] On top of her teaching commitments, starting in the summer of 1969 Anderson carried out post-doctoral research at the Georgia Institute of Technology, working with Dr. Charles L. Liotta on "Studies on the mechanism of epoxidation".
[4][6] Anderson explains that when she joined Morris Brown, the Vice President of Academic Affairs told her that it was a teaching institution, and that if she wanted to carry out research, "you do that on your own time.
Anderson's research has also covered epoxidation mechanisms, solid-fuel rocket propellants, antiviral drug synthesis, fluoridated pharmaceutical compounds, and substituted amantadines.
[6] Outside of academia, Anderson was appointed by President Richard Nixon for a six-year term on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's (CPB) board in 1972.