The Rochester I Know; 408; Dr. Walter Cooper

Music Music Born in the steel manufacturing town of Clairton Pennsylvania in 1928 his desire to become a chemist started at a young age. A gifted athlete in addition to a keen mind started him on the road to fulfilling his educational objectives. In 1956, upon receiving his Ph.D. in chemistry, he joined his wife at Kodak and spent the next 30 years searching the unknown. His life wasn't all beakers and test tubes. A good deal was devoted to raising the awareness of the African-American community. His efforts have earned him the recognition of local organizations here at home to the Chevalier of the National Order of the Republic of Mali

halfway across the world. Today Bill Pierce talks with Dr. Walter Cooper about the Rochester he knows. [host] Hi I'm Bill Pierce. Welcome to The Rochester I know. I'm very happy today to have Dr. Walter Cooper as my guest. Walter Cooper is someone ,you know, I've known for so many years and and uh Walter, I've watched the things that you do in this community by way of trying to increase our a- awareness of the diversity in our community you know day after day year after year that I'm really a great admirer of yours. I'm so happy you're here today and and I know your work hasn't stopped. I know you're you're going to continue and God bless you for that, but Walter this program is about Rochester and about how when you came here and where you came from and what you think of the place and where you think we're going, but tell us, tell us first where you were born.] [guest] I was born in Clairton, Pennsylvania a small town of about 20,000 11 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. It's an- a one-industry town, The Clairton Works of the United States Steel

Corporation and uh it employed at one time 8,000 uh workers] [host] and that kept everybody] [guest] that kept everyone employed. The work ethic was readily transferred uh to new generations because uh everyone worked.] [Yeah [host] Now, you went to school you went to elementary and high school in Claritin] [guest] Went to elementary and secondary uh schooling in Clairton, Pennsylvania and I graduated from high school in 1946.] [host] Well what'd you do in high school?] [guest] In high school uh I was very active in a wide range of activities. I lettered in football, basketball and track and field. I was president of the history club, president of the National Honor Society and I gradu- graduated salutatorian of my class of 316 in 1946 some unintelligible comments] [host] Now, how do you account for that? You obviously came from a- well a relatively poor family with not a great

academic background but you I mean you're an example of maybe what's still a- possible in our in our community today that there are people who can do it if they're given an opportunity. You get an opportunity?] [guest]Yes I came from very poor circumstances. There were six other siblings uh and my father never went to school. He couldn't read or write uh when he died in 1973. He migrated north in 1922 at a time when labor was still needed in our in- industrial economy] [host] north from [guest] north from Florida. And uh he had a rather tough life in Florida. He began working full time in a sawmill at age 8. Therefore schooling was not available to him. He came north with the hope that uh he and his wife would have better opportunities and any subsequent offspring likewise would have a better off chance in a northern community.

[host] well he must have inspired you somehow to stay in school and excel the way you did. You went to college on a football scholarship.] [guest] Yes. I had an academic football scholarship to Washington and Jefferson College and uh Fortunately with my small but tough body (both laugh) [host] but you were fast [guest] I was very fast. I uh I- I held for many years some Track and Field records in the dashes in the western Pennsylvania inter- Interscholastic Athletic League and I all- bull- all the boys in the school in general if they were capable or physically able to play football you probably are cognizant of the fact that western Pennsylvania was kind of a hotbed for college recruiters all over the (unintelligible)] [I thought there must be something about that part of the country whether it's the steel mills or the mines or whatever it produced football players of the highest caliber that went to all the best colleges in the country.]

[guest] Well I like [unintelligible] [guest] Well Bill I'd like to believe that having to work at an early age kind of gave you in the steel mills uh certainly gave you the pre Nautilus type of training (laughing) that gave you strong upper body strength and therefore uh you utilized uh football was the outlet. You know, we did not have malls we did not have television. We did not have all the attractive nuisances that young people have today. And uh so uh [host] It's an interesting observation attractive nuisances (laughing) unintelligible. We have to get you to Rochester Walter unintelligible Washington Jefferson and then from where?] [guest] Then I went to Howard University] [host] that's Howard [guest] '50 to '52 [host] in Washington [guest] a master's program in uh chemistry. And then in the fall of 1952, actually around August 23rd 1952 I came to Rochester to pursue a Ph.D. in physical chemistry at the university. I had been awarded a teaching fellowship. And uh

for a huge sum of money those days $150 a month.] [Wow.] [guest] But I didn't feel deprived. [host]Yeah. unintelligible The University of Rochester in 1952 So you arrive here, Where do you live on the campus there somewhere?] [At that time it was a men and the men and women's campuses were separated and a a my first residence was at 494 University Avenue on the women's campus] [Ah] [because uh] [right down near the art gallery.] [That's right, right across literally across from the Art Gallery a because there was not uh dahmitory dormitory space available on the men's campus so a some of the freshman class] [hm hm] [and uh some of the graduate students were housed on the women's campus or near the women's campus.] [hm hm] [In fact uh that's when I met uh the developers Norman and Nelson Leenhouts.] [Oh yeah] [They were freshman at a time when I was entering graduate school.] [Now you're a Ph.D. candidate living on University Avenue. [hm hm] You're an

African-American. Are you unique? Is there anyone else around like you?] [Well, I was the only one in the chemistry department and a unfortunately uh uh after I finished in 1956, the next uh person of African- American to get a Ph.D. uh did not take place until 1990 or '91.] [ unintelligible] [A young woman by the name of Dr. Allison Williams who now teaches at Swarthmore College.] [hm hm] [So uh but that was not uh it was not unique because for a variety of reasons uh the participation of uh African-Americans in math, science and technology at the advanced degree level has been almost minuscule. In fact it's of great concern because uh For example, in 1992 only 7 Ph.D.s were awarded

to black Americans in a mathematics out of a sum total of uh over uh1000. [What are we doing about it? Walter, what are what are you doing about it?] [Well, there are various programs. I'm uh involved in a uh as a co-principal investigator in a program funded by the National Science Foundation. It's called a Statewide Systemic Initiative - National Science Foundation program wherein the Foundation has committed itself to 10 million dollars over the next 5 years to accelerate the dev- better development of math, science and technology, K through 8 in 6 of our urban districts New York City, Yonkers, Albany, Syracuse, Buffalo, ran Rochester.] [Now this is 10 years from when? from from now?] [We're involved in the program now. We've we've even chosen the schools to participate. Rochester has

3 schools participating in that program. Schools number 39, 43, and The Children School out on West Henrietta Road] [unintelligible] A wonderful program. Now, we're taping this program here in May 1994, you know in these interviews sometimes [laughs] are are are broadcast from time to time so you'll later so I just want the viewers to know that that this program is underway now in May '94 and uh and I know this this will be broadcast soon and probably again and again probably] [again in '95 and maybe in] [Sure] '96 because of the things you have to say here. But now we're jumping ahead a little bit and it's my fault but let's go back to '52 you come to Rochester for the first time. What's your impression of this town? [Well it was quite different from Clareton, Pennsylvania or even Pittsburgh which was only 11 miles away from Clareton a. Industrially, in terms of pollution it was a much cleaner. Secondly uh it seems to be it's a larger community at that time I would

I would suspect Rochester uh the city must have had a population of about 325,000. Uh I a had known uh persons living here in fact a a I was welcomed to the community by a very loving a couple by the name of James and Marian Hicks who kind of adopted me as a surrogate son. They had a daughter who had uh graduated from Howard University and whom I had met a briefly at Howard University. So whenever I came to town I was welcomed by that family and treated a like a son, uh so it was a warm welcome. The university itself uh I found it to be very stimulating. The chemistry department was highly international. The dean and certainly the chairman of the chemistry department at that time was serving on one of the UNESCO c- uh committees. [Who was that?] [Alfred uh

Noyes, Jr., and uh was a rather influential photo chemist. Uh The physics department was also very international and it was right across uh the quadrangle from uh the chemistry a department.] [Who was the president then?] [The president when I arrived on campus was Cornelis deKliewiet who had uh who was born in South Africa but uh had uh some very interesting programs going on at the university. A The dean of uh women was a wo- a person by the name of Haybein. And uh Dean of uh kind of international studies was a woman by the name of Vera Micheles Dean who uh had some interesting programs a presented on campus such as a the impact of uh Western civilization on the emerging a societies. And, so they were kind of ahead of the curve at that point in time.] [Very interesting] [ The physics department had a cyclotron which was

250 million electron volts. [Laughter] That was one of the highest energy uh cyclotrons in the world and it led to the bienniel international conferences on nuclear physics and so you had on campus for those conferences people of the caliber of Nobel Laureate uh Hans Bethe, Victor Weisskopf, Enrico Fermi and others] [Instrumental in the development of the bomb] [Yes] [Here and in New Mexico] [It was the heyday of physics] [yeah.] [And the University of Rochester's physics department was an integral part of that heyday.] [That's great] [W-We probably don't know enough about uh that's and I think that's a program in itself, but we have to get you to Kodak here now. You're at the University of Rochester,[hm hm] [you you get your doctorate and,when you go to Kodak?] Well, uh I was finishing up my degree in uh in uh July. 1956. Actually, a I had been

interviewed and unfortunately at that time uh many compan- companies especially the aw- oil companies a a just would not interview you if you happened to have a Ph.D. and pigmentation to go along [laughs] with that Ph.D.] [Oil.] [That's right.] [The oil companies at that time as late as 1956], [Yes 1956 and in fact DuPont did not hire its first black Ph.D. until 1957. A person whom I had known at Howard University by the name of Dr. Joseph Morris he did not have his doctorate at that time. He spent 1 year at Dupont and then left to go to Penn State to work on a Ph.D. in it anal- analytical chemistry. But on arriving here I married here in Rochester. My wife a] [While you were studying for your doctorate?] [For while I was studying for my doctorate, my wife uh whom I had met in at Howard University had majored in chemistry and she received a Masters from Howard in 1953.

We married in early 1953] [uh hn] [and she eventually was able to get a job in the Kodak research laboratories, after the birth of our first son.] [So she had a job while you were still a student getting a a le- stipend of some kind?] [That's right.] So] [She was a big help.] [Yes] [Yes, she was a supporting educational efforts.] [Wonderful] [Laughs] [And uh so, uh on uh trying to interview, I had 2 offers General Electric and uh Eastman Kodak Company. Generally Electric a wanted me to a be part of a project to grow semiconductor crystals a in one of their research laboratories. They also interviewed me for a very ambitious project at that time that was doomed to failure uh that they ran outside of Cincinnati, Ohio. It was in Evendale, Ohio. It was called the ANP project

Aircraft Nucl-Nuclear Propulsion.] [Oh yes. I re-] [it was a flurry of activity.] [yeah uh huh] [It was highly classified work and I was interviewed in a in a corridor, so I knew] [laugh] [that I would not want to work under those kinds of that cloud of secrecy.] [Yeah. I- I don't think it's changed much with GE] [laughs] [Sure] [and those defense contracts has today. Now you begin at Kodak in 1956 in the where? in the research lab?] [In the research laboratories, Building 59 in a department called Photo -photo theory department and its primary function was to investigate the fundamental aspects of the photographic process latent image theory, what happens when the light strikes the spectral sensitizing dyes or the photographic emulsions. What were the primary and secondary processes?] [You know, you have a couple patents.] [Yes I have some patents.] [In that in that process?] [Yeah in

in the area of uh graphic arts and uh photo technology. But our primary mission was to do basic research.] Now, you're your're at Kodak beginning in '56] [Yes] [and you're there for 30 years.] [Yes until '86.] [During that time I know you're an activist in this community. You're, you're, if not an activist, certainly engaged in a lot of community organizations.] [Well I think that came about because uh I had always been active. Uh In 1943 for example, in high school which a was only about 8 percent uh non-white, there was an unwritten rule in the Physical Education Department that black girls could not be cheerleaders. So after the football squad had won uh 4 games, uh I was able to influence my- the other black players who represented about 30 percent of the squad that we should go on strike in support of the uh

right of uh uh young black girls who were students in the school to become cheerleaders. Strike lasted one day and the football coach said the change had to take place] [laughter] [because he needed his football players] [a third of the players] [ that was in 1943.] [You were ahead of the curve] [In 1950, uh June 1950 a 9 of the the black uh college students in my hometown and uh some high school graduates because we could not secure summer employment in the uh steel mill, we had a sit-in at the uh personnel office on the day that the chairman of the board of uh US Steel visited the Clareton works. We were going to uh present the chairman of the board I don't know whether Benjamin Fairless might have died and uh it might have uh became uh might have become the uh chairman of the board but uh we we we had the sit-in from 8am until

about 3:30 p.m. and two jobs were often and then offered for [for employment.] [And unfortunately uh 2 of the members of our group accepted the jobs so that broke the sit-in, and we then decided to go to the U.S. Steel office on Fifth Avenue in Pittsburgh now. I think this is 1950. [unintelligible] [and I requested] [And you're high school students] [yeah, high school students and some college uh [Wow] students, but I had graduated from Washington and Jefferson] [aah alright] [and I had received my bachelor's in a May 1950. So we went to uh The U.S. Steel's main office Fifth Avenue in Pittsburgh and requested a meeting at some due date with the chairman of the board of U.S. Steel. [Was it Fairless at that time?] [I think it was Fairless] [yeah] [at that time and uh [He was chairman] of course the uh industrial relations person was shocked that we had the temerity] [yeah] [to request such an interview.

So, uh and they asked why and we said well we think it's very necessary to apprise uh the chairman of US Steel of the uh discriminatory summer hiring policy that exists in the Clareton works of US Steel. So uh he said, "Well uh Mr. the Chairman is a very busy person." And we recognize that, eh but we would like to have an opportunity to see him sometime in the future. He said, "Before we proceed along those lines, I will call Industrial Relations in Clareton and set up a meeting." So we we met with Industrial Relations and also the director of personnel for U.S. Steel in western Pennsylvania, and we were able to get 9 jobs] [that summer] [that summer, that very summer] [Walter Cooper remarkable. Now when you came to Rochester who did you get involved with uh to begin with? I know you've been with several community organizations.] [Well, the See my my desire in Rochester was and uh it's always been my desire

just a live as a human being and be able to try to make the what I would call uh creative contributions that emanate from one's fundamental humanity. Eh But certain power elements in the community had defined me as a problem and uh therefore I think uh I had the option of turning my back on these uh matters or or finding positive channels to to protest. uh For example housing. If you look for quote nontraditional housing uh and you were a person of color you had a very difficult time. In 19- For example in 1954, my wife and I answered ads for 69 apartments and were refused for all of them. The last person who who uh whom we talked to was a person who uh had a place on Park Avenue, had stated that she had survived the

Holocaust and she felt that her other tenants would not countenance our presence, but she said, "If you do not find a place within a week for you and your family I'll rent the place to you." Well fortunately we found a place that was very convenient. It was on South Plymouth Avenue. The landlady was a uh uh rather prominent uh black woman in the community and it ena- enabled me to go to the university by bicycle every day and so it was very convenient and uh we uh stayed there until 1958 when we decided, uh for a variety of reasons that we would like to give our children.. . We were expecting our second child. We would like to give them more lebansraum, or living room and uh we started house hunting which was a horror story. A] [Laughs] [We we may not get to the horror story. We gonna have to do another interview.

But I know what it must have been like househunting. But I want to go ahead to the right] [I got involved in the NAACP] [ah] [through uh a woman by the name of Queenie Zuehlke. Her husband was a uh a colleague at Eastman Kodak Company and she was president of the NAACP. A Whites in the community had played a very prominent role in the NAACP in the community, and I uh] [Who were some of the leaders in this community you remember and you respected when you] [When I first came] [first came] [When I first came, I met Bill Knox Dr. William Jacob Knox in a 1954. Uh I There was a woman who was very active by the name of Mrs. Ida Post. You had Dr. Isabelle Wallace from the university who was the chairman of the Ralph Bunche scholarship fund, and a very active person in terms of trying to enhance uh the post-secondary educational opportunities for uh the black students a who were graduating out

of our high schools.] [You were very instrumental in trying to bring the community together after the '64 riots. Who were some of the people you worked with in that effort?] [Well after the 64 riots, uh the uh The- Seymour Scher who was a city manager made a request to Eastman Kodak to place me on assignment to a help them structure a program to implement the Economic Opportunity Act of 19- August 20th 1964. OEO. And uh to set up uh the anti-poverty program so Kodak gave me the uh release time the assignment to structure it along with Walter Lifton from the City School District. He had been an administrator there. There were people who served on an advisory council like uh Father Mulcahy from the Catholic Diocese Diocese. Uh There were very uh uh

prominent people like Father Atwell who published the Catholic Courier Journal who] [was very active] [Laughs] [Walter [Walter Cooper, we're going to have to do another half hour because you know this half hour just went like that because of the wonderful stories that you tell. And I know you're not done yet. I know how hard you work, still work in this community to make sure that everybody has an equal opportunity and I just wish you Godspeed in everything that you do and as this community should know how much you've done over the years so that, Walter Dr. Walter Cooper been a great to have you here today. My name is Bill Pierce. This is The Rochester I know. See you next time.] [Thank you Bill.] Thank you. It's that.