Johnnie Hines Watts Prothro
American nutritionist
Johnnie Hines Watts Prothro (February 28, 1922 – June 6, 2009) was an American nutritionist in the Southern United States whose career spanned the eras of racial segregation, Jim Crow laws, and the passing of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act. She was one of the first African American nutritionists and food scientists.
Early life and education
Johnnie Hines Watts was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on February 28, 1922, in the segregated South. After graduating from high school at the age of 15, she attended Spelman College, a historically Black college, where she received a BS degree with honors in Home Economics in 1941. Her first job after graduation was as a teacher of foods and nutrition at the all-black Booker T. Washington High School (1941–1945). She left this position to continue her education, and received an MS from Columbia University in 1946. After one year of teaching chemistry at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana (1946–1947), she moved to Chicago to pursue a Ph.D. She studied at the University of Chicago and received her Ph.D. in 1952 after completing a thesis on "The Relation of the Rates of Inactivation of Peroxidase, Catecholase, and Ascorbase to the Oxidation of Ascorbic Acid in Vegetables."
Career and later life
Prothro was both an associate professor of chemistry and a professor of home economics and food administration at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama (1952–1963). However, due to the sustained racial tension and abuse she experienced living in the south, she and her family decided to move north.
She worked as an associate professor of home economics at the University of Connecticut at Storrs from 1963 to 1967. Prothro later returned to Tuskegee University in 1968 to chair the department of home economics and food administration.
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