Story written by Mary Lou Wendell
Sam Massie grew up in Little Rock, Ark., in the late 1920s. He was an ordinary child -- except for this genius-level IQ. Both of his parents were teachers.
As a preschooler, Massie accompanied his mother to classes where he picked up what she was teaching to her students. This head start, combined with his high IQ, sent Massie racing through his early education two grades at a time.
Years later, Massie, who lives in Laurel, earned national acclaim because of his achievements. But as a child, being smart didn't always seem like a blessing.
"In the seventh grade, other kids were 12 and 13," he explains. He was only 7. Sometimes his older classmates would throw a party but they never invited him. Once, Massie showed up anyway (because there was ice cream) and one of the girls told him he was not wanted.
"That hurt." Massie remembers. "And I resolved, from that day to this one, I'd never go anywhere I wasn't invited or wasn't prepared."
Massie, now 73, leans back comfortably in his chair as he tells his story. He is in his office at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, where he has been teaching chemistry for 27 years. When he was hired in 1966, he was the first black professor at the academy.
Massie is thinking about retiring in January, but he says he will always be a teacher.
As he talks, it is easy to see why students clamor to be in his classes. He has an empathy for people who struggle to overcome obstacles because he grew up overcoming the obstacle of racial segregation. And when he recounts the details of his younger days, he exhibits the skills of a master storyteller.
Massie graduated from high school at the age of 13. After high school, he wanted to attend the University of Arkansas, but blacks were not admitted. So he earned his bachelor's degree from the Agricultural Mechanical Normal (A.M.N.) College of Arkansas, which was the school for blacks.
"There were only three things blacks were supposed to do," he says. "One was till the soil -- agricultural: prepare machinery -- mechanical; and teach -- normal."
Massie's mother and father always instilled in their two children the importance of education. Massie's brother is a physician.
So Massie persisted. He received his master's degree in chemistry from a black college, Fisk University. For his doctorate in organic chemistry, he was accepted at Iowa State University. No other school would admit him. And even then, Iowa didn't accept him "all the way."
Massie was not allowed to sleep in the same dormitory as the white students or use the same science lab.
"The laboratory for the white boys was on the second floor next to the library. My laboratory was in the basement next to the rats." Massie says, "Separate but equal."
Many years later, in 1981, the University of Iowa gave Massie its highest alumni honor. The Distinguished Achievement Citation. "The title of my acceptance speech was "From the Basement Next to the Rats." Massie says with pride, not anger.
When he was 23, and one year away from his doctorate, Massie was ordered to report to the U.S. Army draft board. Because he was in graduate school, Massie assumed he would be easily exempted from service.
But he remembers the words of the draft board chairman when he went to see him: "You got too much education for a nigger. You belong in the Army."
"I could have gotten mad," Massie says now. "But you have to overcome it."
So Massie hurried back to Iowa State and was put on the Manhattan Project, 
a government-funded
program researching the atomic bomb. This was a top priority for
the government during World War II and people who worked on it
received an automatic draft deferment.
When Massie completed his doctorate at the university, many of his white friends went on to jobs in private industry. But industry wasn't ready to accept blacks then. Massie says; he returned to Fisk to teach.
That's where he met his future wife, Gloria, who was a senior at Fisk. As a teacher, he had to get special permission to date Gloria because she was still a student. But he says getting permission was easy. He was in his early 20s and so young, he says, "None of the teachers wanted to talk to me anyhow."
Since then, Massie has chaired chemistry departments at Langston University in Oklahoma and at Fisk University. He has headed the pharmaceutical chemistry department at Howard University. He was an associate program directed at the National Science Foundation.
In 1963, he became president of the North Carolina College at Durham. He has done research on new medications and was awarded a patent in 1985, along with two midshipmen, for antibacterial agents which are used to help fight gonorrhea.
Among his many awards and honors is the White House Initiatives Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to science, technology and community service.
By the time the Naval Academy invited Massie to teach, he was the most qualified man for the job, black or white. But the racial difficulties continued. He couldn't buy a house in Annapolis where the other teachers lived, because of his color.
So Massie bought a house in the Montpelier neighborhood of Laurel, where he and his wife have lived ever since.
Every now and again, Massie will recite a poem to get his point across, like this one whose author is unknown:
An old man traveling a long highway
Came the evening cold and gray
To a chasm vast and deep and wide
Through which was flowing a solemn tide
The old man full of vigor and vim
Crossing eased in the twilight dim
But he turned and, safe on the other side,
Built a bridge to span the tide.
Massie says his life has been a story of building bridges for himself and for others.
He has served as a role model for thousands of students, both white and black, but especially for young black men.
Men like Gene Kendall. Three decades ago, when Kendall was 14 years old, he attended a summer science camp sponsored by the National Science Foundation.
"The only thing I remember about that entire two-week experience was Dr. Samuel Massie. He was the first black Ph.D. I'd ever seen," Kendall says. "That was when I decided I was going to do something with math or science."
Kendall did go on to do something with math and science. He is now Navy Captain Gene Kendall and is the director of the division of math and science at the Naval Academy. In other words, he's Massie's boss.
Kendall says Massie told that story recently to an audience at a banquet. "He said, 'One of the things you learn to be careful about is the model you set, because some day those people may come back to be your boss.' "
Massie has had a different sort of influence over some of his fellow faculty members, including chemistry professor Ronald Siatkowski.
The two professors share an office and the walls on Massie's side are covered with photos and posters. One is a picture of a youthful Martin Luther King, Jr. standing with Massie's three young sons.
Massie's side of the office also has boxes everywhere. They are full of his life's work. Massie claims that he can't get rid of anything because he may need it for a book on blacks in science he wants to write after he retires.
Siatkowski, a former Marine officer, says he is Massie's opposite in many ways. His side of the office is extremely neat. He says lightheartedly that it's a constant battle against the encroaching flood of Massie's papers and bosses.
Siatkowski also deals with his students very differently than Massie does, especially in the area of grading.
"Sam really believes that one should include effort and improvement," Siatkowski says. "That's the biggest difference between him and most professors."
Years ago at the academy, Massie started a program of afternoon tutoring for students who needed it. He sympathizes with students who are struggling due to poorer starts, poorer backgrounds. And Siatkowski is beginning to understand this other side. He's learning not to be so tough.
"Let's face it -- there's not equity among academic high schools and institutions throughout America," Siatkowski says.
Siatkowski has had influence over Massie as well, he says. Their office is neater than it used to be. "It was much worse when I got here. This is an improvement," Siatkowski says with a smile.
Mark Elert, chairman of the academy's chemistry department, says Massie is probably the most noted professor on the faculty because of his service to community colleges, science boards and academic institutions.
Recently, Massie spent the summer at the National Science Foundation in Washington, developing programs to encourage young minority students to choose science as a career.
Even the president of the United States knows him, Elert Says. At a dinner in Massie's honor recently, President Clinton appeared on video "talking about what a great guy Massie is," Elert says.
The dinner was to celebrate an education endowment set up in Massie's name by the National Naval Officers Association. The endowment is designed to help women, minorities and people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds living in Anne Arundel County to get a higher education in math, science, engineering and health-related fields. Scholarships totaling $37,400 will be awarded annually to 11 high school students who have been accepted at colleges in Maryland.
For 21 years, Massie was a member of the Maryland State Board for Community Colleges, serving under six governors. In addition, he volunteers his time to teach at high schools in underprivileged areas. "He's gone off on his day off to lecture in a school that couldn't afford a teacher of his caliber," Elert says, "No one else has done that at the academy."
Despite his own achievements, Massie says minorities in this country still have a long way to go. He is currently one of only two black faculty members at the Naval Academy, although more are expected next year. And out of 4,300 students at the academy, only about 250 are minorities, Massie says.
"Sometimes it's discouraging," he says. "But I couldn't believe in a God if I didn't believe that things are going to be better."
When Massie walks down the halls at the academy, he is greeted by many shouts and warm "Hellos" from students and fellow professors. He stops to shake hands and joke with the people he knows.
At other times, his serious side surfaces. "I'd like to be remembered as a teacher who cared," Massie says, "as a man who tried to make a difference."
These pages are maintained by Tennessee State University.
