“They tried to keep us isolated from the public. You were literally incarcerated. So I went there in 1947, I was six years old. I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t understand” said Uncle Norbert Palea, a kūpuna of Kalaupapa.
Uncle Norbert Palea is one of the youngest living elders from Kalaupapa. He was misdiagnosed with leprosy. Palea was in attendance at the third annual Alice Augusta Ball Remembrance Walk.
Prior to Ball and her work, Leprosy was rampaging through Hawaiʻi, killing off thousands of Native Hawaiians. In 1865, the Hawaiian Kingdom with the approval of King Kamehameha V passed an “An Act to Prevent the Spread of Leprosy.” In short, this dedicated Kalaupapa, a peninsula on Molokaʻi, as a place for Native Hawaiians who contracted mai lepera—a Hawaiian word of Leprosy—to reside.
The Alice A. Ball Remembrance Walk honors her work with chaulmoogra oil and treating leprosy across the world, especially in Hawaiʻi. This year, the annual walk was hosted by Sister Circle at Mānoa, Graduate Professional Access Program and Native Hawaiian Student Services.
In 2000, Former Lieutenant Governor of Hawaiʻi, Mazie Hirono, declared February 29 as “Alice Ball Day” to celebrate Ball every four years. Former Gov. David Ige proclaimed February 28 as “Alice Augusta Ball Day” back in 2022 to properly celebrate her annually.
“We are recognizing Alice Agusta Ball who is the first Black woman to graduate from the College of Hawaiʻi in 1915. She is also the first Black woman to earn her master’s degree and teach in the department of Chemistry,” said LaJoya Reed Shelly, lecturer in Ethnic Studies and Educational Administration.
Past the celebrations is a tragic story of a young bBack woman whose work was stolen by the second president of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, Arthur Lyman Dean. “Her work was also stolen by her advisor, Artuhr Dean. He did plagiarize her work,” said Shelly.
On top of her work being stolen, this was never recognized till centuries to come.
“It was a professor within the library sciences department who ended up finding Alice many many years later and figuring out that Alice’s work had been stolen by Dean and really started pushing for her accurate recognition. Making sure that the ‘Dean Method’ is now known as the ‘Ball Method,” said Niya Denise McAdoo, co-founder of the Sister Circle at Mānoa.
Alice A. Ball’s Life
Ball’s love for Hawaiian plants was inspired after she moved to the Hawaiian Islands with her family from Seattle in 1902, with the purpose of aiding her grandfather’s arthritis. She attended the Central Grammar School, once renamed Princess Ruth Keʻelikōlani Middle School. After her grandfather’s passing, Ball returned to Seattle, before moving back to the islands to receive her degree in Chemistry from the College of Hawai’i.
After graduating and teaching at the College of Hawaiʻi, Ball’s work with the extracting of the ava plant gained attention by Dr. Harry T. Hollmann, the acting assistant surgeon at The Kalihi Hospital, who was working with Native Hawaiians and residents who contracted leprosy. Inspired by her methods with ava, Hollmann encouraged Ball to work with him to treat patients with leprosy.
“In Hawaiʻi I interested Miss Alice Ball, M.S., an instructress in chemistry at the College of Hawaii in the chemical problem of obtaining for me the active agents in the oil of chaulmoogra,” wrote Hollmann in his 1922 publication, “The Fatty Acids of Chaulmoogra Oil In The Treatment of Leprosy And Other Diseases.”
While still teaching at the College of Hawaiʻi, Ball developed a method where she takes the oil of the chaulmoogra plant and creates a water-based injection. Prior to her method, injecting the oil into patients would cause the skin to be bumpy and form blisters. Her method, being water-based, allowed the oil to be absorbed in the bloodstream.
“After a great amount of experimental work, Miss Ball solved the problem for me by making the ethyl esters of the fatty acids found in chaulmoogra oil,” said Hollmann.
Ball’s time at the College of Hawaiʻi intersected World War I. While teaching Chemistry, Ball taught her students how to use a gas mask, during which she inhaled chlorine. Through this demonstration, Ball fell ill and moved back to Seattle, where she passed at the young age of 24 in 1916.
Tragically, Ball never published her work and contributions to treating leprosy.
Five years after Ball’s death, Arthur Dean, the second president of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, plagiarized Ball’s work and published it through J.T. McDonald, “Treatment of Leprosy With the Dean Derivatives of Chaulmoogra Oil—Apparent Cure in Seventy-eight Cases” in 1921.
Remembrance Walk at Bachman Field:
While celebrating Alice Ball at Bachman Hall, Kenneth Leonhardt, specialist and graduate chair of the Department of Tropical Plant & Soil Sciences, stood in the audience including both the current president Wendy Hensel and former president David Lassner of the university and said,
“On three occasions this morning it was mentioned that Alice Ball’s work was stolen. Which was true, it was stolen by a guy named Arthur Dean. It was plagiarism. And what we do at the University of Hawaiʻi when students plagiarize is we dismiss them. In this case, in 1948 we put his name on a building. It’s been there for 98 years and in my opinion it’s time to take his name off of that building.”
This is not the first time when people have been vocal about changing the name of Dean Hall to “Ball Hall” to honor Alice Augusta Ball. There was a petition in 2023 that shared the same goal as Leonhardt, to change the name of Dean Hall, calling for a name change that is “long overdue” and claiming that “ her work was stolen and wrongfully used which led to President Dean getting a hall named after him.”
Naava Lee Simckes, a student in Mechanical Engineering, also spoke at the Alice Ball Remembrance Walk at Bachman Field, “Her work was improperly cited, and it was stolen from her. It’s a privilege to study STEM and also be in a position to cite my work. It’s a privilege that I wouldn’t have to experience the same thing.”
Alice Augusta Ball and her legacy is a testament to acknowledging minority accomplishments.
“Alice is not just a pillar of the Black community, she is a pillar of all of us at UH Mānoa and across the world,” said McAdoo.
