The color of his skin profoundly limited his social and scientific aims, making it impossible to secure a position at a predominantly white school, for example, or even attend events where his only dance partners would be white.
But in academia, Just continually came up against the punishing boundaries of being a black man – even an exceptionally well educated one – in the United States. Just obtained his undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College and later his PhD from the University of Chicago. Strongminded and strict, she stressed the values of education and cleanliness in Ernest.Įrnest later recalled his time on the island with a nostalgia and love of the natural world that remains familiar to many who grow up in the Lowcountry, even a hundred years later.Įrnest Everett Just never returned to the Carolina coastal plains after his mother died, but he retained a keen interest in natural history that would deeply inform his scientific work. There is evidence to suggest the township Maryville, located in present-day West Ashley, was named in her honor. There she took up work in the nascent phosphate mining industry and became a leader in the Gullah-Geechee community, founding the area’s first school and church. Mary, Ernest’s mother, soon moved the family to James Island. was one of the most prominent members of the local black community, and his death – just a month after Ernest’s own father’s death by alcoholism – was a terrible blow to the family, emotionally and financially. In the 1880s, the Just family attended Emmanuel AME church and lived on Inspection Street, near the wharfs where Ernest’s grandfather, a former slave, made his living as a skilled wharf-builder.
Ernest’s elder brother and sister both died as a result of the epidemics. Just after Ernest’s birth, outbreaks of both cholera and diphtheria ravaged Charleston, hitting the medically underserved black community with particular severity. Though born at an auspicious time – the 100-year anniversary of the incorporation of Charleston, South Carolina – Ernest Everett Just’s early life was marked by tragedy.
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