He was also an accomplished chemist,and the founder of the Graduate Students Association at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA).
He was born in San Antonio Texas.His family lived for a while in Washington, D.C.,before moving to Los Angeles,California while James was in elementary.He completed in track & field at LA Polytechnic High School (later renamed John H. Francis Polytechnic High School),while working as page for the Los Angeles Public Library.
He enrolled at UCLA in 1931,turning down athletic scholarships to the University of Southern California (USC) and the University of Notre Dame.Nicknamed the "Westwood Whirlwind," he was the captain of the track and field team.In 1934 he ran 20.8 seconds for 220y,with Bob Kiesel and Foy Draper being the only sprinters in the world to match James that year.
Despite his athletic prowess,he admitted his main focus was always academics.He did not have an athletic scholarship,given UCLA did not award track scholarships back then.
He paid his way through school with a Regents' scholarship and a job in the chemistry lab.He made friends with future Nobel Laureate Glenn T. Seaborg who was his teaching assistant for one class.He graduated Phi Beta Kappa in chemistry in June 1936,having a straight-A average.He also won the Jake Gimball Award for most outstanding all around senior.
James won the 400m at the Western Olympic Trials with a time of 46.3 his lifetime best.
In the Olympics,he won the bronze medal in the 400m with a time of 46.8 seconds on August 7.He came up behind American Archie Williams and Godfrey Brown of the United Kingdom.
He returned to UCLA in the fall of the same year to pursue in chemistry and physics.He observed that graduate students were not interacting much with people outside their department,and that there needed to be an organization to bring them together.He took up the issue directly with Vern Knudsen,dean of the Graduate Council of the UC Academic Senate.Vern supported the establishment of the Associated Graduate Students,independent of the already-existing Associated Students UCLA (ASUCLA),which served undergraduates,it was later renamed the Graduate Students Association,and absorbed as a branch of ASUCLA, acting as the official students government for graduates,James was also selected the ASG's first president.
In 1937, he was awarded his Master of Arts.He then went on to earn his Ph.D.in chemistry and mathematics in 1940 from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) under the guidance of Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling.
He taught from 1940-1941 at Fisk University.From 1941-1942,he began working at Eastman Kodak Laboratories,becoming the first African American to work there.From 1942-1943,he helped with the war effort by working for the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD).He returned to Kodak as Senior Chemist,which he served as until 1953.
From 1953-1959,he was Project Director at Technical Operations ,Inc.Then he became Director of Basic Research at Fairchild Camera and instrument Corporation.He later worked at SMC Corporation and Smith Corona Marchant before setting down as Laboratory Administrator for the chemistry department at Stanford University in 1975.Troughout his career,his specialities were photochemistry,electron diffraction,magnetic resonance,solid state physics,and neurochemistry.His research on color photography resulted in three U.S. patents.
He died while on vacation in Te Anau,New Zeland.
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