A History of African Americans in Meteorology

Many of us in the atmospheric sciences know of Dr. Charles Anderson and Dr. Warren Washington, the first and second African Americans, respectively, to earn degrees in the field. A number of us recognize the role Tuskegee University played in opening a pipeline for African Americans in meteorology in the 1940s. Others of us are aware of June Bacon-Bercey and her historical standing as an African American woman in broadcast meteorology in the 1970s. Knowledge of the past provides a foundation for the present and hints at possibilities for the future.

“A History of African Americans in Meteorology” is a chronological listing of milestones and significant events in the history of Colored, Negro, African American or Black people in U.S. weather and meteorology, since the Emancipation Proclamation. It is not an exhaustive list simply because so much history remains hidden or undocumented. It is a chronology, still in progress, which complements the many existing articles on African Americans in meteorology that tend to focus on a handful of individuals who broke barriers. From online data at the Library of Congress and National Archives, along with detailed web searches, and word-of-mouth and networking discussions, a good deal of previously little-known history emerged. This presentation shines a light on more than two dozen individuals, along with several universities which have greatly contributed to the small, but growing, number of African Americans in the atmospheric sciences. It is this information that fills out the wider history of meteorology and serves as inspiration particularly to African Americans and to members of underrepresented groups contemplating or entering the atmospheric sciences, as well as for those of us who are career meteorologists or just history enthusiasts.