This week in the Hagley Vault, we're remembering Dr. Wesley Memeger Jr., who left us last month. When Dr. Wesley Memeger Jr. started at DuPont in 1964, he was only the fourth African American with a doctorate in chemistry to join the company. This DuPont recruitment poster features Memeger at the lower right.
Over the course of a thirty-two-year career, Memeger amassed fourteen patents and left his mark on some of DuPont’s most famous products, like Kevlar, the synthetic fiber found in bulletproof vests. In his retirement, he and his wife Harriet, a fiber artist, pursued their joint love of art together. His passion for chemistry also influenced his career as an artist; his pieces often explored geometrical themes reminiscent of molecular models.
In 2020, Hagley, in conjunction with Dr. Jeanne Nutter, conducted an oral history project with Dr. Memeger as part of our Black STEM Pioneers in Delaware project. In 2021, in partnership with Clark Atlanta University and Bloomfield College, we premiered Dr. Wesley Memeger, Jr., Science Into Art, a special documentary chronicling the life of Dr. Wesley Memeger, Jr., which was accompanied by an online exhibit, Dr. Wesley Memeger Jr.: Scientist, Artist, Activist.
The exhibit covers key points of Memeger’s life story and makes use of archival photographs as well as clips from an oral history of conducted by Dr. Nutter, which also served as the primary source for the documentary. Visitors to the exhibit can listen as Memeger recounts his journey, beginning as the son and grandson of farmers in St. Augustine, Florida during the era of Jim Crow laws, following his interest in science to Clark College, a historically Black university in Atlanta, at the height of the movement for Black civil rights, to his career at DuPont and his intriguing transition from scientist to artist.