Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc.
Dr. Ernest E. Just
Ernest Everett Just, an eminent marine biologist, was born in Charleston, South
Carolina. Seeking a substantial education, he attended the Industrial School of State
College, Orangeburg, South Carolina; Kimball Academy at Meriden, New Hampshire;
and Dartmouth College, graduated in 1907. Each school he attended was proud to
have him because of his kindly demeanor and his unusual ability as a scholar.
Accordingly each school he attended honored him.
At Dartmouth he won the Phi Beta Kappa Key, the highest scholastic award to be
given to a student in an undergraduate college.
Upon graduating from Dartmouth he became a teacher in the M Street High School
of Washington, D.C., now the Dunbar. As Brother Just was marked for greatness, his
rise was inevitable. Soon he answered the call of Howard University to become and
instructor in Biology, his major field. It was here he fascinated the hearts of Negro
youth, inspired them and made them ambitious. Here he met Oscar J. Cooper, who
told him of the fraternal dream of collegiate empire in his mind and in the minds of
his bosom friends, Edgar A. Love and Frank Coleman, all members of the Howard
University class of 1913. He listened to their fancies and their dreams, helped them
become realities, and thereby became with them a Founder of our charming
Fraternity, the Omega Psi Phi.
In 1915, after displaying unusual brilliancy in research, the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People conferred upon him the Spingarn Medal, which
each year is given to a Negro who has been most outstanding in achievement. The
following year he obtained the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the University of
Chicago.
The honors that have since come to Brother Just are too numerous to mention in our
limited space; but we shall list a few of them. He did his work so well, that he was
selected as guest investigator, to engage in research at the Kaiser Wilhem Institute
for Biology. In 1919, he spent six months in Biological Research at Naples, Italy. He
had also at his disposal the private laboratories of several of the crowned heads of
Europe.
For twenty years at least he did research worked at the Marine Biology Laboratory at
Woods Hole, Massachusetts. A gift from the Rosenwald Fund of about $80,000.00 a
year for several years made it possible for Dr. Just to be relieved of his
undergraduate teaching assignment and devote all his time to research and the
teaching of graduate students.
Aside from this, Dr. Just was selected by leading biologists of Germany as the best
fitted among world scholars to write a treaties on fertilization.
Brother Just was a member of the National Research Council, editor of the
international Council, editor of the international Journal, "Protoplasm." He was a
member of the American Society of Zoologists, the American Naturalists, and a
corresponding member of La Societe des Science Naturelles et Mathematiques de
France.