Major Spaulding
*Major F. Spaulding was born on this date in 1900. He was a Black Agronomist.
From Clarkston, North Carolina, Major Franklin Spaulding received his B.A. from North Carolina State College and Cornell in 1925 and 1927. Spaulding earned his M.S. from Cornell in 1928. From 1928 to 1937, Spaulding taught Agronomy at North Carolina State. He earned his Ph.D. from Massachusetts State University in 1935. Spaulding’s dissertation was “Factors Influencing the Rate of Decomposition of Different Types of Plant Tissues in Soils and the Effects of Products on Plant Growth.”
He was a professor of Agronomy at Prairie View State College (1937-38), Tuskegee Institute (1938-40 and 1942-45), and Langston University (1940-42). From 1946 to 1958, Spaulding chaired the Agronomy Department at Tennessee A&I State College. He was elected Dean of the school's Department of Home Economics in 1958. Dr. Major Spaulding died on April 19, 1964.
The Earliest Ph.D. Awards to Blacks in the Natural Sciences,
by Caldwell Titcomb
The University of Chicago Press and JSTOR
