The Ragon Institute is proud to recognize and celebrate Black History Month. One of the founding goals of the Institute has been to address the need for greater diversity in science, both in terms of the scientists themselves and in geographic representation. Starting in the late 1990’s, recognition of that need was a major motivator in our building research capacity in South Africa, establishing training programs for African scientists and trainees, and launching the Connect Africa program which gives travel scholarships for advanced training to African students. Our hope is that the Ragon Institute can have a major impact on helping to launch the careers of a diverse and talented scientific community, both locally as well as globally, to lead us into the future.

Also in honor of Black History Month, the Ragon Institute would like to acknowledge the contributions of accomplished Black scientists from the past, figures who were too often overlooked but whose work laid the groundwork for scientific endeavors currently underway at the Ragon. One such figure is Loney Clinton Gordon, a Black woman who, in the 1940’s, isolated a virulent strain of the Bordetella pertussis bacteria, enabling the development of an effective whooping cough vaccine. Ms. Gordon also first identified sheep’s blood as the most effective petri dish medium for culturing and isolating these bacteria strains. Ms. Gordon’s contributions are particularly noteworthy at the Ragon Institute, as vaccine development for a variety of diseases is a key part of our mission.

Born in Arkansas in 1915, Loney Clinton Gordon moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, as a child. She went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in home economics and chemistry at Michigan State College in 1939. After college, she initially worked as a dietician in Virginia but faced discrimination and unacceptable working conditions. In an interview with historian Carolyn Shapiro-Shapin in 1998, Ms. Gordon described her decision to leave that job, recounting “I couldn’t take that prejudice. They could say no to me, or I could say no to them. They said yes to me, but I said no to them. So I left.” Returning to Grand Rapids in search of work, she was turned away after being informed that white male chefs would not wish to take orders from a Black female dietitian. 

Forced to abandon her career as a dietitian, Ms. Gordon found work in the mid-1940’s in the lab of Dr. Pearl Kendrick and Dr. Grace Eldering, two female physician-scientists working since the 1930’s on developing a vaccine for pertussis. Also known as whooping cough, pertussis was a highly prevalent and contagious deadly childhood disease at the time, killing approximately 6000 young children a year in the United States and permanently disabling thousands more. In the 1940’s, more infants died from it than from all other childhood diseases combined. Similar to our present-day experience with the COVID 19 pandemic, the public was absolutely desperate for a whooping cough vaccine at the time.

While Kendrick and Eldering had been able to create a pertussis vaccine with some efficacy, Ms. Gordon’s work transformed those efforts into something truly game-changing. Through testing and analyzing thousands of pertussis cultures, she was able to isolate an especially virulent strain of the bacteria, ultimately leading to a highly effective vaccine. In her interview with Shapiro-Shapin, Ms. Gordon explained, “When I found out that was the organism [to be used for the final version of the vaccine], I was just ecstatic. I was crazy with joy and happiness.”  In 1948, Drs. Kendrick and Eldering used Ms. Gordon’s discovery to create the combined DTP (diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis) vaccine, the precursor to the DTaP still in use today.

Subsequently, Ms. Gordon worked as a microbiologist at the Michigan State Health Department, serving as a lab supervisor and teaching others until her retirement in 1978. The Michigan House of Representatives honored her in 1977, with House Resolution  No. 115, for “the contribution she has made to the health of the citizens of our State, our nation and the world through her work in the development of a vaccine against whooping cough.” Ms. Gordon died in 1999. In 2000, she was inducted into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame, and in 2019, a statue was erected in Grand Rapids, Michigan, of Ms. Gordon and Drs. Kendrick and Eldering in honor of their work. We at the Ragon Institute salute this indomitable pioneer in the ongoing crusade to harness the immune system to fight disease.