Ep. 4 Ribonucleoproteins and the Undesirable Alien

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This episode Megan & Milena cover artist and sociopolitical activist Elizabeth Catlett & Marie Daly, the first black woman in the USA to earn a PhD in chemistry.

Elizabeth Catlett

Born 1915, Elizabeth Catlett was a prolific African American sculptor, printmaker and activist in the over seventy years she worked. Spending the majority of her life in Mexico, she was declared an ‘undesirable alien’ during the Cold War for her socially progressive views. This episode we explore the how’s and why’s of her artistic development, the importance of escaping mid century American segregation and dropping a hot potato for a hot tamale. 

Selected Post-Revolution Mexican Mural Art
1931 Mural by Diego Rivera, The Uprising. Diego, along with the other Los Tres Grandes (Siqueiros & Orozco) painters used public art to combat class and social inequality in Mexico
Segment of a massive mural by David Siqueiros, From the Dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz to the Revolution. In it, Siquerios documents the transition from dictatorship to the uprise of the working class, resulting in Revolution.
1944 Mural The Clowns of War Arguing in Hell by Jose Clemente Orozco. Political art commentary extended past Mexico to include the horrors of WWII

Selection of Elizabeth’s Prints

1946 Linocut, I Have Special Reservations. This is part of the series The Negro Woman (renamed The Black Woman Series in 1971). This series earned her the prestigious Julius Rosenwald grant that took her to Mexico in 1946
1952 Linocut La Presa (The Dam) – this is one of many contributions Elizabeth made while at the Mexican artist collective, the Taller de Gráfica Popular (People’s Graphic Arts Workshop) celebrating Mexican revolutionary social and economic progress.

Selection of Elizabeth’s Sculptures

This is the 1947 ceramic sculpture Head of a Young Woman. Her sculptures are typically busts, ranging in material from ceramics to bronze, wood and stone. Her soft abstraction of the body puts her work along the likes of Henry Moore and Brancusi, Big Deal early 20th century artists.
Made in 1970 in response to the killing of a Black Panthers member, Elizabeth created Target Practice. Almost 50 years later, the subject of black men being casualties to police brutality is as relevant and fucked up as ever

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Marie Maynard Daly

Holding the title of the United State’s first African American woman to obtain a PhD in Chemistry, Marie Maynard Daly could give you the ins and outs of your body at the molecular level. It was her life’s work to look at the way our bodies build themselves, as well as the way they break down energy and fat sources. She had her hand in research that explored DNA replication, protein synthesis, and pancreatic amylase. As well, she was essentially the grandmother of the movement to understand the importance of heart health and the diet’s effect on it.

With the men gone to war and no one to work domestically, the government launched a campaign that would influence women to step out of their kitchens and into factories in order to support the war effort, which led to  Rosie the Riveter, shown above. But it wasn’t just factories that hired women. Agencies as big as NASA would start to hire women in labs and research centers to create a bigger workforce and to further the United State’s dominance in science and technology. It was around this time that Daly would secure a fellowship and a job as a lab assistant at her Alma Mater, Queens college. This would simultaneously help her pay for her first graduate degree, as well as earn her important lab experience.

This little guy, Alpha Amylase, would be the key to Daly becoming the first African American woman to earn her PhD in Chemistry. Found in the pancreas, this tiny protein breaks down starches in order to use them for the body’s energy, and was what she would write in her PhD Dissertation, “A Study of the Products Formed by the Action of Pancreatic Amylase on Corn Starch.”.

A simple picture of a DNA strand and its Purines and Pyrimidines, the building blocks of life. Daly spent 7 years at the American Cancer Society, pulling apart the cell and its parts, paying special attention to ribonucleoproteins (proteins that help DNA replicate itself) and the DNA structure residing in the nucleus of the cell. Essentially, she looked at how DNA and proteins work together in the body.

Taken by photographer Ted Burrows, this photo is found in the Albert Einstein College of Medicine Archives. Daly’s Research at Einstein helped link cholesterol to clogged arteries and- eventually- to heart attacks.

As always, music by EeL