James Forte
*James Forte was born on this date in 1927. He was a Black Lab Assistant and health director.
From Brooklyn, New York, Forde, in 1944, was hired by the Union Carbide and Carbon Company and began working on the Manhattan Project. He worked at the Nash Garage Building at Columbia University, where scientists worked on developing the gaseous diffusion process. There, Forde was a lab assistant tasked primarily with cleaning glass tubes to test various barrier solutions. Forde was the only Black among white Ph.D. scientists working on the Manhattan Project at the Nash Garage Building.
After the war, most of the scientists working at Columbia were transferred to Los Alamos to continue working on atomic weapons, and Forde was laid off. He resumed his studies at Brooklyn College and worked at the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). Later, Forde received his master’s degree in Public Administration and moved to southern California, where he became director of Health Services for the county of San Diego. Forde has spent the rest of his life working with state and local organizations to improve healthcare for minorities and the poor.
