Our Ancestors Were Messy - Drs. Anna and Percy Julian: The Affair That Helped Birth The Pill

Episode Date: April 23, 2025

In the summer of 1932, Anna and Percy learn that their scandalous love affair has been exposed on the front page of the most popular Black newspaper in DC. They were on their way to making history but now that the secret’s out, their futures hang in the balance. Starring Nygel Turner.Support this independent production and access bonus content at https://ourancestorsweremessy.supercast.comStay in touch at [e-mail] the show on Instagram at @ourancestorsweremessyFollow the show on TikTok at @ourancestorsweremessyLearn more about the show at https://ourancestorsweremessy.comListen on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@OurAncestorsWereMessy SOURCESJulian the Trailblazer by Peter TysonForgotten Genius. Nova. PBS"Reclaiming a Black Research Scientist's Forgotten Legacy" by Felicia R. Lee"DuSable Exhibit Highlights Juilan 'Power Couple'" by Robert FeltonYou can read the Washington Afro American newspaper which is still in print and holds the distinction of being one of the oldest continuously published Black newspapers in AmericaYou can support the archiving and sharing of this newspaper at Afro Charities

Hey, so this is the first episode of our ancestors were messy that I ever made way, way back in 2024, and I am so proud of it. And I did make a little mistake. In the episode, you're going to hear me say that DePaul University is in Missouri, when in fact it is in Indiana. My apologies to the Tigers. The Secret Adventures of Black People and Coco Hill Productions present. Our ancestors were messy. Percy Julian. Dance, drank wine, and dot, dot, dot, with professor's daughter. Today, a scandal is percolating in Howard University's chemistry lab.

Between a couple whose brilliance made history. Go down in black history. And whose messiness made headlines. Drama. This episode stars Nijh Turner. Nah, that is wildly. He said, give my tenderest regards to your wife. And your host, Nicole Hill.

What are you thinking at this point? That's kind of wild. This is Our Ancestors Were Messy, a podcast about our ancestors and all their drama. Ooh, like, this is juicy. Everybody get ready. All right. So to start, can you please introduce. yourself. My name is

Nige Turner. I'm a podcaster, a host of Adultish by Wire Media and Radiotopia, and been on several other things and stuff like that. Just look up Nige Turner somewhere and check me out. Google me. Where are you from?

I am from Richmond, California. And what kind of a black would you say you are? What kind of a black? What kind of a black? Black is wild. It's funny.

I mean, so there's like an Earl sweatshirt, like, song from a while back where he's, where he's, like, two black for the white kids and too white for the black. Like, that's definitely how I always felt, like, growing up. So, and I'd say, I guess I still, like, kind of fall in that category. But, like, as I've grown up, I felt like I've really found my black community. So I'm a black black. All right. I like that. A black black.

Okay. Do you feel responsible for the racial uplift of black people? Do I feel responsible? I don't think about it like that regularly, but I do feel that way whenever I'm in a room where I am one of the only black people there, I just feel like that weight kind of just hit. And I'm going to get questions like, hey, do black people people, you know, or when black people say, you know, and it's like, okay, now I'm speaking as the national delegation of all black people, you know. You better get it right. Right.

That's what I'm like her. But yeah. All in all, yes. I do feel responsible. Do you think that this is something that we should let go of? Do you hope that there's a day where we don't feel responsible for racial uplift of all of us? I do really like the idea of being free in every aspect of the word free. I don't know.

This is going to sound weird. But it's just sometimes like you see like those like white kids and stuff who are like, like, I'm just going to take, you know, a summer off of school. I'm not going to, you know, I'm actually not going to go to like college and I'm going to just like experience this. And I'm just going to try this out. and I'll see if this works. And you know, and you can just tell there's not a lot of weight on all of these different things. And but whenever like I talk to other black people,

it's all we always put a ton of weight on things. It's like, okay, I got this working. I'm doing this. I'm working, you know, three different jobs. One of these things got a hit.

And when that does, like then we all, we all, we all going to be on. Like then I'm going to pull everybody up. I'm going to do it. Like, it's just this like, I got to save everybody,

uh, type of feeling that, that you have. And that's kind of regardless of where you're even from, too. Like you could grow up in a like suburban neighborhood, be super privileged and stuff. But as a black person, you're still going to feel like, you know, the next black person that walks in here. I got to, I got to get them to where they need to be. I got to, you know, so like.

And I do think that is a really good thing. It's a really valuable thing. It's a really, it's a necessary thing. But if we could be. in a place where we didn't have to do that. Obviously, I would want to see black people just be free. Yeah. So I'm going to be telling you a story.

And it's a true story. Okay. So we're going to start in Washington, D.C. We're in 1932. National, international headlines. World War I ended. Then everybody went into the Roaring 20s. They partied.

They drank. They had so much fun. But then the Great Depression. One in every four workers is unemployed. everyone's so sad. FDR is going to be facing off in the November elections against Herbert Hoover. He says he's got a new deal. He says it will fix all the problems.

We don't know yet. We're hopeful. When it comes to pop culture and entertainment headlines, the biggest criminal, Al Capone, the biggest true crime, the kidnapping of the Lindberg baby, most popular book, Brave New World, and the biggest black stars,

Josephine Baker, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong. Everybody's talking about them. But the day we're going to specifically, is July 30th, 1932. Okay, so you get home. You open your copy of the Washington Afro-American, one of the most popular black newspapers of the day, and you read the following.

Can you please read that first page? Oh my gosh, I feel like I'm in school. Like, it's popcorn reading. Julian tells of Hot Date with German Sweetie. Dance, drank wine, and dot, dot, dot, with professor's daughter. Percy Julian, head of the Department of Chemistry

at Howard University. What was that? Oh, supped. Supped? What is suppered? Like suppered? Oh, okay. Sucked and dined with pretty

Viennese girls in his apartment in Austria according to this week's letter to Robert Thompson, his assistant at the time, who is now suing him. Man, this is wild. Like, back in a day, like, stuff is just so sneaky. Like, you know, now this would be like a picture, like a video or something like that, but this is like

word of mouth. It is. And it's in the paper. And today, we're covering the love story of one of America's first black power couples, Percy and Anna Julian. So to start, I want to introduce you to Percy Julian, one half of this eventual power couple. And I have to ask you, how do you feel about chemistry? As like in regards to relationships? Oh, no, sorry. Yeah, that's a fair question. The science, the class chemistry, the science of chemistry.

I liked chemistry when I took it. It was pretty dope. Okay, that's good because Percy Julian loves it. So you two have this in common already. Already you're viving with the ancestors. I have known. I cannot talk about anything chemistry related, but I'm going to be asking you serious chemical questions as we go, and I hope you are prepared to answer them.

For sure. Okay. So Percy Julian was born in Montgomery, Alabama in April of 1899. He is one of six kids, and his family is just scraping by. He's got two parents, Elizabeth and James. They used to be teachers, so they started a library at their home, and they want their kids reading all the time. They believe that education will be their kids' ticket to a good life.

Percy's grandparents, so that's Elizabeth and James' parents. were enslaved. Then you have Elizabeth and James their first generation free. Percy's second generation free. You and I are fifth. Fifth generation. It's really weird.

I was like, it's not that long ago. My grandparents are third generation free? That's crazy. Yeah. And I knew my great-grandparents on both sides of my family and their second generation.

Wild. So it's still kind of a new thing. everybody's trying to figure out like what will freedom for black people look like. And I think a lot of black people at this time are thinking if they act like white people, they will be left alone, which I was going to say works. I don't know if it works. Who knows? I don't think it works.

I don't think we'll ever be left alone. Yeah. But I mean understandable for the time. Exactly. Exactly. So Percy's reading all the time. He's very drawn to chemistry. At one point, as a little boy, he climbs a fence so that he can watch.

Watch the little white kids do chemistry stuff in their labs at their white school. But unfortunately, someone spots him, and they call the cops. And the cops scare him away. He is in Montgomery, Alabama, after all. So it's obviously very racist. What were your biggest fears when you were, like, elementary school aged? I don't know. The dark.

Probably the dark of my closet, my brother. Those are good ones. Those are the big ones. Okay, so Percy's are rattlesnakes and white people. So, wait, what? No, I just, yeah. Those are good ones, too. So when it came to his education, under Jim Crow law,

black kids could only go to school up to the eighth grade. Then after that, they're like, you don't need to be, you don't need to know anything else to go work in the fields. But his parents are like, absolutely not. They cobbled together like a little bit more of an education for him, and then Percy gets into DePaul University, which is a small liberal arts college where he can study chemistry

in Greencastle, Missouri, and it's 1916 at this point. The 15th Amendment has passed in 1870 before he was born, so black people can vote, but it's such a hassle. And, you know, this is after Reconstruction era, so the country saw biracial democracy for the first time,

but in response to that, Jim Crow laws are created. So he gets to Greencastle, but he can't live in the dorms, he can't eat on campus, He's got to walk all over town until he finds a place that will serve black people. Very annoying stuff. At first, he really struggles.

I'm sure, one, because he has to deal with all that nonsense, but two, because he only got to go to the eighth grade. So what he decides to do is he enrolls in high school while he is in college and does both so he can catch up. And then he gets this really cool professor who's named Professor Blanchard. And Professor Blanchard tutors him on stories about all these famous white chemists and they become his heroes. and then he learns about a famous black chemist who will become the bar that Percy tries to measure up to for the rest of his career. And his name is St. Elmo Brady, the first black person to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry in America.

And Percy's like, I'm going to be just like you. I do have a picture of St. Elmo, actually. And Percy that I will share, let's say, St. Elmo first. Okay, how would you describe this man? Oh, handsome. Slick, got the hair slicked back. Nice suit. It's a good looking dude.

How would you describe Percy? Oh, Shark Kid, too. Yeah. Now, they was fitted. They had some nice suits and everything. Hair slipped with the part, too. No, yeah, they both look cold. If you had to cast someone to play them in movie,

in a movie. Ooh, I don't know. I got to pick somebody like, so the first one was, that's Elmo. Mm-hmm. St. Elmo. I feel like, you know, like, they always, they always go a little too far in movies

and stuff like that too. So they probably have like Jedina play him or something. Yes, you're right. That is who would play him. I'm a classic man. That is exactly who would play him. Okay, what about Percy, who would play him? Percy.

What's the, What's the, he was the voice of Simba. Jason Weaver. Jason Weaver. Jason Weaver. So like a young Jason Weaver. I'm just trying to get my life back on track. I just need an opportunity.

That's all. Okay. We got our cast. One is too far. One is just right. Yeah. Okay. So that's Percy.

He makes it through everything he has to go through in college and then he graduates. He's first in his class. He's five beta Kappa. America's most prestigious academic. honor society. He's made it in. When he graduates, they give him a key, the five beta cap a key, which he gives to his grandmother. She shows him her scars on her back that she got from being whipped when she was enslaved. And she said, I endured all that for this moment. It's huge. Yeah, Steve.

So you're Percy. It's 1920. You've got a bachelor's degree. What are you going to do next? Take the world by storm. Ready. I'm going to be the next Elmo. Yeah, that's exactly right. He's like St. Elmo got his Ph.D. So Percy's like, I have to go get mine too. And so his goal becomes to be the second black man with a Ph.D. In chemistry and America. He applies to all these places.

He's waiting to hear back from them. Then his professor, Professor Blanchard, pulls him to his office and he's like, listen, I got all these letters from white chemists, all your heroes. And they were like, we know he applied to the school, but he's black. And he doesn't need a Ph.D. to teach at a Negro college, which is all that a black man. man can do anyway. So tell him, let that dream die, just go work at a Negro college. Percy's really sad because he wants to have a PhD, but St. Elmo taught at Fisk University. So he's like, okay, I'll go teach at Fisk. He's teaching there, but then in 1922, he gets a scholarship to go to Harvard University and work towards his master's degree in chemistry. So he goes, it's the same deal, though, even though

Harvard has been letting black people in for 70 years. They still have these codes. He can't live on campus. He can't eat with everybody. He deals with all these indignities. He does what he has to do. He graduates with his master's degree. His Ph.D. is right there. So he starts looking into teaching assistant roles at Harvard, but they're like, we're never going to let you teach white people anything. So if you don't have a TA role, he can't get his PhD. So this is the end of the road for Percy. He realize it's like no one's going to let me do that. I don't know how St. Elmo did it, but Percy's like, oh, no. So around then, St. Elmo decides to chair the chemistry department at Fisk, and he leaves his job as a chemistry professor at Howard. And so Percy, as he does, follows in the steps of his hero.

So in 1929, he packs his bags and he moves to D.C. to take over St. Elmo's vacant position at Howard as a chemistry professor. So now he is in D.C. Now we're going to switch gears. We're going to talk about Anna Johnson, who is the second half of this eventual love fest. So Anna was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1903. She's the fifth of seven girls. Her dad was a podiatrist. Her mom was a homemaker, so they are ballers. They're not like Percy. They got money. So when she was a little girl, she got sick and her dad homeschooled her for a while. Then when she went to go enroll in the third grade, they were like, you're so smart, you should go to eighth grade. So she is getting ready to what third to eighth is okay yeah they're like you can do it kid you'll be fine so she goes to enroll in the

eighth grade but in baltimore we have the same problem of like black people don't need to be educated past the eighth grade her family's like yes they do they send her to west philly she goes there to live with her aunt where the schools are much better for colored children and she enrolls in high school at the age of 12. She graduates in 1919 and she enrolls in the University of Pennsylvania. How old is she now? Fifteen, maybe? Fifteen going to college. Okay. She's like a little baby in there, but she's doing what she has to do. Zoe 101. Exactly. So UPenn at this point when she enrolls, they've been letting black people in for 40 years. Philly's not legally segregated, but the Great Migration is bringing a ton of black people into town.

At that point, the white people are moving away, and black people are just like doing their thing. They're living in Philly. They're free. They're going to college as babies. She also has the right to vote at this point, but it's such a hassle. And groups like the deltas are fighting to improve access. And so she pledges Delta, and then she graduates in 1923. Ooh, and I have a picture of her.

Let me get my actors. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Start thinking about your actors now. Let me see. How would you describe Miss Anna? She's adorable. Nice, like, little, like, swooped up cut. Like, yeah, she looks, like, really sweet.

She's got a bob. She's got, like, a nice bob. Yeah, nice little bob. She's wildly light skin. Like. Yeah, really light skin with a bob, though. But you can tell she's black. Yeah.

Especially cut from the eyebrows. Yeah. You could always tell a black person from their eyebrows. I always say that. It's just hard to pick. I'm like, who do I? Who is this life? Yeah, I don't know.

Paula Patton? You know who they would have player. Who? Journey. Oh, they would. I think I ain't got nothing to get his journey. I think she would body that. Yeah, yeah.

Get your ass up. We got to get the... All right, so she's 20 when she graduates and gets her degree. And then she gets married to a man named Robert Thompson. He has a government clerkship, so that means he's training to be a physician. I don't really know anything about their ceremony, but what I do know is that Anna gets this idea for herself. She sets her mind to this thing.

Wait, so she got married at 15. No, she got married at 20. Oh, 20, okay. Yeah, sorry. When she graduated, she would have been like a... Yeah, she graduated at 20. So, yeah, so she's married. She's 20.

She's with a man who's training to be a doctor. And she decides that what she wants to do is become the first black woman in America to earn a PhD in sociology. This is her goal. So she goes back to UPenn to start working towards her master's degree. And then, Robert Thompson gets a job offer as a lab assistant to the new head of the

chemistry department at Howard University, which he accepts. So he quits his clerkship in Philly. He and Anna packed their bags. They head to D.C. so that he can start working for his new boss, Mr. not doctor yet, but Mr. Percy Julian. So it's 1929. For the first time, all of our principals are in D.C. They are in Chocolate City.

Anna starts training black teachers at minors' teachers college. She has her own car, and she's somehow, I always have these questions about history that nobody has dug into, but somehow she's commuting to Philly. It's 150 miles to continue working towards her master's degree. And I don't know how regularly she's doing that, but I just read that she's going back to Philly in her car. So good for her. In her car, okay. Meanwhile, Robert Thompson, her husband, is at the Howard Yonge. University Chemistry Lab. The pace would have been really demanding. There would be no allowances

made for error because his boss, Percy Julian, runs a very tight ship. He's had to endure racism and humiliation and having his dream deferred time and time again, but things are about to change. Because in 1929, this is the same year everybody got there, Percy won a scholarship to study at the University of Vienna in Austria where he can get his PhD. Percy's like, I don't care what it takes to get this PhD, I'm going to get it. So Howard, I have to go. And so they tell him that's okay. We're going to appoint this white professor.

His name is Dr. Jacob Schohan. And he will handle all of your duties until you get back. Percy's like, fine. He goes to Vienna. So the chemistry that Percy has been studying, this is the part that I'm going to expect you to really kind of dive in here. Oh, yeah. Break down.

Talk about the compounds. Talk about, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is your time to shine. Here we go. So the chemistry he's studying. he's studying is plant chemistry. And in 1920s, Vienna, you're shaking your head,

you're classic, classic plant chemistry. So in the 1920s, Vienna is the place to study this. And so what he's trying to do is like, you know how coffee keeps you up because of caffeine and cigarettes calm you down

because of nicotine? He wants to figure out what plant has pain reduction qualities and then find a way to synthesize and mass manufacture a pain remedy. So that's what his PhD is working towards. So he gets to Vienna, and he's got all this fancy U.S. equipment.

Everybody's like, oh, my God, can we study with you? Can we be friends? And he's like, yes. And then he makes all these friends. And they are rich and white. And so they started inviting him to their family's dinners and vacations and parties. And in Europe, at this time, first of all, lots of black people go over there because they're just treated way better.

that's the experience that he's having. So he is loving his life. And when he's not out, like, doing all these parties and stuff, he's in the lab, speakers, goggles, white jackets, and chemistry. You know, you know. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You've experienced this. Of course.

Late nights in the lab. Yeah. So he's just like working, working, working. And then he writes these status update kind of blog post letters back to his staff at Howard. He's like, I'm working so hard. but sometimes I get to party. Life is so much better here for black people. Mainly I'm working.

That's like the contents of these letters. At some point, he starts getting letters back from his lab assistant Robert Thompson. And in his letters, he tells Percy, listen. So you remember Dr. Jacob Shohan, the white guy that's your stand in. He's skipping classes. He's got a nasty attitude.

His direct supervisors don't like him, and I think this could go bad. And Percy's like, I don't want to hear about that. Did you hear me when I told you I was having a great time? I'm not interested. So the drama in the U.S. continues without him. So Percy works really hard. He synthesizes all the plant alkaloids.

You know about this synthesis. Syntzies. Yep. Yes, exactly. Taking photos. Photos. Taking photos and synthesizing them. Wow.

How lucky am I to have a chemist on this episode. We do it. We can, you know. So then he does it. He successfully makes a pain medicine from plants or leaves or whatever. I'm not the chemist here. And then finally, after having to go to Missouri, Memphis, Boston, there was like a short stint in West Virginia. I didn't even tell you about because he hated it so much.

Then D.C., and then finally Vienna in 1931, he has finally earned his Ph.D. in chemistry. He's done it. We're so happy for him. A second one? I don't even know. He was the second one. Somebody might have beat him. I don't know.

Man, that would be like. But let's believe that he was. He was. You did it, Percy. Second in our heart. Yes. So now he is Dr. Percy Julian. He returns to Howard University.

He says, thank you, Dr. Jacob, show him for your service. You may leave. Then he tells his assistant Robert Thompson and the rest of his staff, he will be turning the school into a nationally recognized center for research. Him and all his genius friends start writing all these. research papers, and Percy becomes America's preeminent black chemists and a superstar at Howard University and the toast of D.C. But he hasn't heard the last from Dr. Jacob's showhand. Someone makes Dr. Julian an offer he can't refuse. And Anna Johnson chooses a parking space that puts her

on a collision course with... Okay, so like I said at the top of the episode, this was my pilot. I made it and submitted it to Tribeca and I got in and then I decided to make this show on my own. There is no podcast studio or secret baller or anything like that backing me. It's just me and my savings and my friends for whom I am eternally grateful. Well, actually, that's not true. It was just me and my savings and my friends. But now I also have the support of a steadily growing household, which is the community of donors that help to cover the cost of bringing you Our ancestors were messy.

Every day I open my email and I see that somebody else has joined the crew and I'm so thrilled because becoming a member of the household and donating to this podcast helps me out quite a bit, but it also allows me to start planning for, dare I say, a second season. If you would like to join the household, you can visit our ancestorswemessy.supercast.com and give a one-time donation or become a subscriber for just $7.7. a month and receive bonus content, directors commentary, and be the first to hear updates about the future of this show.

That's Our Ancesters Were Messy. com. The link is also in your show notes. To Our Ancestors Were Messy. All right. So Dr. Percy Julian is back in D.C. working in the Howard University Lab. His right-hand man is still Robert Thompson,

who is the husband of Anna. So that's all our players. Now I'm going to introduce you to some someone knew. His name is Dr. Mordecai Johnson, and in 1932, he is named the first black president of Howard University. Before then, all the presidents were white guys. So Mordecai Johnson, the president, calls a Percy. He says, congratulations on your degree. I'm so happy for you. Also, some stuff went down while you were in Vienna. Dr. Jacob Shohan's supervisors accused him of insubordination. They were just like, basically, He sucks.

And Mordecai was like, I have hiring and firing authority, so he's out. Mordecai goes to Jacob. He says, this is your 30 days notice, goodbye. Jacob says, you do not have hiring and firing authority over me because I'm on the tenure track and I can't be fired with only 30 days notice. So Jacob appeals to the Howard University Board and they take his side. So now he gets to stay and he's acting even worse than he did before. So Mordecai is pissed.

and he wants him out. So he says, Percy, you already create like a very toxic work environment. And so I just want you to up the ante, work them even harder, demand even more excellence,

never be chill about anything ever, and make it so that Jacob wants to quit. Would you do this for Mordecai? I don't know. I feel like it has to be another plan. Like, why I'm going to make everybody else struggle through all of this just so we could get one dude out.

Like, it's got to be another way. Is there anything that Mordecai could offer you that would make you go along with this plan? I mean, not really. Maybe money. But I think I would have to have a meeting with everybody else, like without brother.

You know, like, everybody got to have a meeting. We were like, yo, it's about to get wild. We're about to turn up the heat. It's going to be really intense. But just no, it's not personal. We're just trying to get Jacob. Jacob out. We're just trying to get Jacob out of here.

I think if I met with everybody and everybody was like, all right, all right. Yeah, we, you know, it's the only way. It's the only way. Then I think I could do it then. Wow. Okay. So you're going to trust you can get the whole lab on your side, but it's really just like we are just torturing this one man. Yeah, yeah.

Okay. That's a very honorable way to go about it. Percy has a different plan. He says, I will help you, but in exchange for something. In exchange for something. In exchange for something. And to understand what happens next, you have to understand black newspapers. So at the time, black newspapers are everything.

A lot of black people are starting to advocate for civil rights. I mean, they have been advocating for a long time, but they're using the papers to fight for their civil rights, to find jobs, to celebrate one another, to see, like, positive representations of themselves. Okay. but also people are people and you don't just want to read about the struggle all day. Sometimes you want a shade room kind of update on sex, on money, on power. And that's a cross race, actually.

What white papers have started doing to attract readers is they would publish true crime and celebrity gossip and bathing suit picks on the front pages. And so black papers just copied that. They also caught whenever a black person is mentioned in a white paper like the New York Times or the poster, whatever, they would always write nage, comma, negro. So what all the black papers are doing is they would write like Jacob, comma, white. And they just like do little, little things to be black. Or they will write sepia toned. They write sep-they have so many words for white people.

That's dope. So the Washington Afro-American was one of the most read black papers in America. And whereas the top papers editors, like all the other black papers, they would be like, oh, we're going to publish this gossip, but we hate. to do this, the Washington Afro-American was like, bring it on. We love it. More drama, more drama, more drama. Of course, civil rights stuff, but also drama, drama, drama. So on April 30th, 1932, thousands and thousands of black citizens of D.C. open up their issue of the Washington Afro-American, and they flip to page 13, which is where all the mess is, and they read the following.

Chemistry Department Shake Up set for June 30th. It was learned Tuesday. that two members of the Department of Chemistry had been told they would be recommended for dismissal. The two members of the department are Dr. Jacob Shohan, White, Associate Professor and Robert Thompson, assistant director of chemical laboratories. Separate lists of charges were filed against both men by Dr. Percy Julian,

head of the chemistry department. So the charges Percy filed were for inefficiency and lack of cooperation. Jacob is going to get a hearing in front of the board because of the whole tenure track thing, but because Robert Thompson is only a lab assistant, he's just fired. So anyway. Wait, so Percy, my bad. No, no, no, yeah, go ahead, go ahead.

Percy is Robert's boss, and Robert is married to Anna. Mm-hmm. What are you thinking at this point? That's kind of wild. I'm about to still live it. Then on May 14, so just a few weeks after the first headline, the following story appears in the papers. Robert B. Thompson filed suit against Dr. Percy Julian, Howard Chemistry Head, and District Supreme Court Monday. He set forth that he discovered his wife and Dr. Julian together in the apartment of the latter on October 25, 1931.

He swore that after having observed his wife's car in front of the address, he later heard her. her voice in Dr. Julian's apartment. Thompson went home, packed his things, and left, he stated. On the following morning, Thompson took the case to Dr. Mordecai Johnson, president of Howard University, but was told to go to the university physician and get some pills to make him sleep. Thoughts. What? Mortichai just was like, get some sleeping pills. You're going to be good. Sleep it off. That's what he said. Okay. All right.

How are you doing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Talk us through it. How are you feeling? So Robert filed a suit against Dr. Percy, who just had him fired. Because he discovered Percy with his wife. At Percy Julian's house. Why was he at Julian's house?

Oh, these are good questions. Well, he said he saw his wife's car outside. Oh, did they just live on the same street or something? Like, how'd you end up? Hmm, interesting. It's not like he can ping her phone or nothing like that. How do you just pull up? That's true.

Wow. Okay, so he fired him. Took his wife? So here's where we are. Mordecai went to Percy and he said, I need you to get rid of Jacob. Percy said, Mordecai, I need you to get rid of Robert. Mordecai's like, all right, fine, fire him both. I don't care.

So he does. So Robert is like, What? And then he releases this bombshell. Wow. So Percy is kind of wild. I thought Percy was the thought Percy was the protagonist in this whole story. Well, we are, aren't we all the protagonists and the antagonists? I guess so. So Percy, he's up against it because after he fired Jacob and Robert, the two joined forces. And they decided to give the black papers those, Remember those blog post status update style letters that Percy was writing while he was away in Vienna? They give them to the Washington Afro-American.

And for the rest of the summer of 1932, the papers released Percy's letters one by one. And everyone is super scandalized. So while he was away, he was really feeling himself. And he starts trash talking people by name, including other chemists, including same. St. Elmo Brady. I'm a classic man. Can you please read the quote

from one of his letters on page four? We have synthesized two beautiful alkaloids found in opium. I must laugh when I write the word alkaloid.

And remember Brady. Brady could labor with his knowledge for a hundred years in this field and secure nothing. Wow. He's just,

He thinks these are private correspondences and he is really feeling himself. There are his extracurriculars. Can you read the update on page five? All right. I've made a date with my little German sweetheart. Mum's the word. We shall sup. Who is he writing this dude?

Robert Thompson. Oh, so he was bragging to bread. All right. We shall sup together in my palatial chambers this evening. The freedom of European life. is the one joy forever. Last night, for example, after supper, we sat at the table until nine o'clock. The father, a chemist, excused himself.

The mother soon said, good night, and bade me come again soon? Oh, yeah, like bid me, but in past tense. And bade me come again soon. Oh, like, I bid you a do. I bade, and bade me come again soon. then the daughter put the latest records from the American dance songs on the victorola and we danced drink wine and dot dot dot until long past my bed hour all right and then this is the last one at the end of one of his letters to Robert Thompson this is what he writes this really this

really hurts him ah no dog was wildly Percy was Yo, he was tweaking. He said, Give my tenderest regards to your wife, Anna. I shall drop her a letter soon. Wow. How are you feeling? Percy is cold.

That's a cold, dude. I look you don't even rock with it, though. Like, it's not even, like, it's not even cool. Like, he's not even doing it in a cool way. What do you mean? I don't know. Percy was just, like, just wilding. He was just out in the open, like, yo, tell your wife, I said, what's up?

Like, what was he on? We don't know. We'll never know. I said he was looking for a relaxing plant. He was looking for it. Maybe this wouldn't have happened if he had found a different kind of plant. Right. He should have chilled out.

It's alleged that when he opened the papers and he saw his private correspondence in print for everyone to see. see, he cried. Pause our broadcast with the once triumphant Dr. Julian in tears clutching his newspaper. But his story doesn't end there. You came for the mess. Now stay for the rest. When our ancestors were messy continues. Can I tell you something about the Washington Afro-American?

This was the first black newspaper I ever read. And the headlines about Percy Julian were on the. the front page of that paper. I couldn't believe my eyes. And that's what put me on the road to making the show. I was able to read that paper because there are organizations out there that save and archive these invaluable artifacts of black history. Organizations like Afro Charities, the nonprofit that maintains and cares for the Afro's archives. They host programs and provide meaningful opportunities for all of us to engage with and contribute to the archives. And in this way we get to meet our ancestors up close. You can visit afrocharities.org to learn more about

their work and how you can support. And you can follow me on Instagram and our ancestors were messy to see video from my first visit to the archives in the fall of 2024. Both those links will be in the show notes. Th thrilling conclusion of this week's installment of our ancestors were messy. So Percy, he's totally disgraced. He has to resign from his position at Howard. No other Negro college will have him. Everybody's whispering about him in D.C. He's ruined.

As for Anna, in the 30s to get a divorce, you had to prove that you were the victim of cruelty, adultery, or abandonment. And so since this wasn't always easy to prove people paid professional witnesses to testify to adultery. So your suspicion about, well, why was he driving past Percy's house,

he may have paid someone to follow his wife to prove his suspicion so that he could get a divorce, which he does get. And I'm sure that Anna is a bit of an outcast at this point. So our two principals, they're down and out. Man. But they continue dating each other. Okay.

I want to know, how did it happen? Like, how did they spark it off? Well, you know, we can, okay, let's imagine a scenario. Because we'll never know This could be right. Yeah. You're Percy. You're the head of the lab.

You throw a little Christmas party. You say everybody, bring your significant others. Who did we say is playing him? Jason Weaver. Jason Weaver shows up.

Okay. And he's with, who's playing her? Journey. Journey. Jason Weaver and Journey lock eyes across the beakers in the lab at the party.

Well, I guess the party wouldn't be in the lab. They lock eyes in the auditorium. Something happens, but they're like, we can't. This isn't right. So maybe they're just passing letters back and forth. Or he is signing off all the end of his letters. Well, no, I guess they are writing letters because he did say, I will drop your wife a letter soon. That's wild. Like, I'm also married. And so like, if somebody was like, bro, like, don't trip, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a send Randy a letter soon. I'm like, what do you send her a letter for?

Like, that's wild. It's wild. Yeah. That's just cock. Like, he got real cocky with it. He did. He did. He thought he was on top of the world and he was, but now he is at the bottom again.

He can't stay in D.C. He can't find work there. So he has to take low level chemistry jobs back in Missouri because his professor, Professor Blanchard is the only one who takes pity on him. And it's like, come on back. I will help you. So he is working there. Anna continues working towards her PhD and she gets it.

She becomes the first black woman to hold a sociology PhD in America. That's far. Also, Percy goes through this whole thing where he has to earn back his reputation by proving the super famous chemist wrong. And he's trying. He's trying. He proposes to Anna. They're supposed to get married. He says, I can't marry you right now.

I have to prove this famous chemist wrong and I have to earn my reputation back. She's like literally, if you cancel this wedding one more time, it's over between us. He's like, okay, okay, sorry, sorry. So on Christmas Eve in 1935, they get married. On Christmas Eve. On Christmas Eve, they do it. They are, they're too much. They're just, they're just so dramatic.

Oh my goodness. You got married on Christmas Eve. Sending letters. I sent, oh my gosh. They do it big. Yeah, they're a lot. They get married. He proves that famous chemist wrong.

They move to Chicago, and then they enter into black history. So this is where their story usually starts. Okay. They get to Chicago. A bunch of really racist things happen to them. But also, Percy gets a job working for Glidden, the paint company, and he patents all of these, like, little inventions. And they let him run a lab, which is his first lab since Howard. and Anna gets really involved in the civil rights struggle in Chicago.

They decide they want to start a family, but it's not easy. Anna suffers a couple miscarriages, which inspires Percy to study the hormone progesterone and learn more about its role in facilitating healthy pregnancies. They eventually have their daughter, Faith, and their son, Percy, Jr., and they take in their nephew Leon. Percy starts his own lab called Julian Laboratories, and Anna becomes the company's VP, treasurer and bookkeeper. And then Percy figures out this way to synthesize progesterone,

which allows him to create it in bulk and for cheap, which creates the foundation for the birth control pill. Oh, wow. And by the 60s, Doctor and Dr. Julians are millionaires. They've done it. Can you believe it?

Doctor and Dr. Julian's. Mm-hmm. That's dope. So they become the toast of the town of Chicago. There are major donors to civil rights related causes for the rest of their lives. Everyone remembers them for being prestigious, an honorable, and an exemplary family. Percy passes away in 1975 at the age of 70 with 18 honorary degrees.

And Anna passes away in 1994 at the age of 90, having won dozens and dozens of service awards and honors. There's no mention of whatever happened to Robert Thompson, but I hope we wish him well. Man, I'm sorry, Rob. Sorry, Rob. Obviously, there's a whole lot more that happened, but for now, that is the story of one of America's first black power couples, Percy and Anna Julian. How are you feeling? I don't know. I want to, like, I want to clap, but also, they were moving, they were moving kind of nasty for a minute.

They were, love is messy, though. I'm a firm believer in love being very messy. So, like, I understand. boss I don't know because Percy was he was kind of wild he was good I don't know I don't know what he was doing in Europe it's so funny because I was talking about the story with somebody else and they were like well all the oppression he endured he was finally somewhere where he could be free so we have to think about you know

when the trauma can be free you're like he was wild and no he didn't have to act that way because you can just hear it in the way that he's talking like he was he was having a good time but he was like you know I'm locked in though. Like, and then he was discovering all this stuff like faster than other people. And he was like, oh, you know, you didn't even see how this connects to this. And yeah, yeah, he was like, yeah, I'm the, I'm the smartest dude ever. I don't know. Hopefully he was, he was different and he wasn't like cheating and stuff like that too. You know, the hard thing at the, I didn't include this part in the story, but at the end of his life, or when he's near in the end of his life,

his son, who's grown up the son of a millionaire, he was like, dad, you think education's going to save us. You're on this respectability stuff. That does nothing that will get us nowhere. You haven't done anything. Your generation hasn't made any progress. We're going to go to the lunch counters. I'm going to march like how Dr. King called us out too. Like we're the generation that's really doing things. And he talks about at the end of his life, he's like, maybe he, maybe my son is right. Maybe I didn't do anything. We thought that doing it this way would make progress, but my kid still has to go sit at these lunch counters. So maybe it didn't, didn't make progress. And it did make me think a lot about like how we kind of look at the what the past

generation has accomplished and we're like that was nothing. You guys like your respectability, politics, that's nothing. We figured it out. And that made me a little bit sad. No, I, I literally just got into an argument with somebody about this the other day in my like friends group chat, like where everybody was was basically like, oh yeah, like the sit-ins and marches and stuff like that, it did nothing because nothing has changed. it's just like repackaged and yada yada yada or whatever and i'm like you can't say that i mean like what is progress right like where you're thinking about all these things while you sit in your house while you eat wherever you want while you you know work wherever you want while you like

all these things that you just take for granted yes there still needs to be a ton of more change but like why are you turning around and discrediting all these people who fought for you to have the things that you'd have and like there is legitimate change that was done. Absolutely. And that's not even like opinion. That's just fact. But I don't know why people think like that. It's hard.

It's hard to remember generation generation. I do wish we had a better way to remember. Yeah. Okay. How does it make you think about their whole story and the black history part of their story knowing the messy beginnings? I guess at my core, I'm like, ooh, like this is this is juicy. Like I like it.

because it's a cool story. It makes it more interesting. It makes them human. Which also is, I think my main takeaway from it is just that even all these people that we look back on, they were just human like us, experiencing like all the same things, being messy. They didn't have everything altogether. Like, Percy messed it all up and he was disgraced and yad, yad, yada. And it felt like that could have been the end of the story.

especially for Anna, like, especially for her. In those times, being a woman, a black woman in those times, and you do something like that, you know, like, the whole world was against her. Mm-hmm. So, but for everything to turn around and your story to be so much different in the long run, it's, like, cool to look forward to. Yeah. Oh, do you think, are you looking for your story to turn around?

Not to turn around. It's just cool, like, if I did mess everything. up, you know, I could maybe get it back. And better than ever, you could be, y'all could be millionaires. Yeah, it could be chilling. This episode was written and researched and produced by me, Nicole Hill. Thank you to my first ever guest, the brilliant and hilarious Nige Turner. Thank you to my first ever sound designer, John DeLore.

I can't wait to work again. Thank you to A.A. Hernandez for hearing this episode. Thank you to A.A. Hernandez for hearing this episode. and agreeing to be my executive producer. Thank you to my story producer Martina Abraham Zilunga, my research producer and voice talent, Chiokai Insen,

my script editor, Shante Hill, and the designer of my show art, Aselika Smith, you all let me commandeer countless dinners and calls and hangouts for years to talk about this show and this episode specifically.

To learn more about the show, you can visit our ancestorsromessi.com. And before I go, I just have to say, I'm a storyteller by training, becoming more of a historian and an archivist every day. And I started this show in part because when I found these old black newspapers, I was reminded of this quote by the poet philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge. If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us.