Shendrine B. Henry believed that a woman’s place was in the home, and in the chemistry lab, in the community and the science classroom, and so she achieved in each place for most of the 84 years of her life. Shendrine’s adoring father named her from a Portuguese name he had heard in his native Barbados, even before he immigrated to New York City with his new wife, Hortense. In 1915, when they had their first child--not the boy everyone thought she would be--they called her: ‘Shendrine Eugene’. Ezra gladly named her, and for the next 45 years he never called her a nickname—the family did not believe in nicknames, slang or baby talk.
Shendrine was the first child in the family born in the United States, but like a lot of Black immigrants, she was very proud of her Caribbean, Irish and African heritage. Black immigrant families often had extended families arrive intact, unlike the shattered families of slavery practiced here. Her family had been granted permission to immigrate because Ezra had worked for the US building the building of the Panama Canal. Ezra wanted his children to have educational opportunities in this country; Hortense also searched for economic betterment. Shendrine’s parents were also glad that because of Ezra’s work, each of his children could have dual citizenship in the US and Barbados. Like many of almost 1 million West Indian immigrants of the WWI period, they maintained frequent contact, through trips and letters, with relatives back in the Islands. Also like many immigrant West Indians, they highly valued school success, speaking multiple languages, and culture contact with those who were different from them.
By the time Shendrine had two bothers and two sisters, including the twins: Felix and Eunice, and went to Girls High in New York City, her multi-ethnic group of friends from the immigrant neighborhoods of Brooklyn NY, often called her: “Sherry”, especially since she was active playing tennis, participating in her church and the Black immigrant community. Her dad encouraged her to read the newspaper daily; they often discussed local and international politics (he supported the Marcus Garvey Black Star project), and both parents supported her early achievement in school, where she was labeled as ‘gifted’. They hoped Shendrine would become the first doctor in the family, a dream spurred on by the ailments of her youngest sister, Leticia, who eventually died at 15 from a hole in her heart. The whole family was very saddened and stunned—one of her brothers felt he could never go to church again because the death of his sister was so cruel. Shendrine did not waver from her religious beliefs. In her quest to prepare for medicine, Shendrine attended Hunter College in NYC and graduated with a major in chemistry in 1940. During college years, at a church picnic, she had also met a tall young Black man from Washington, D.C., named Dudley Henry, and they were married about the same time as college graduation. Ezra liked the way Dudley supported Shendrine’s quest for knowledge and her community work through the church.
WWII and other family factors, including a pregnancy that miscarried, interrupted Shendrine’s dream of becoming a medical doctor, then came the birth of her daughter, Angelina. Six years later, and three years after Dudley had returned from serving in the Army, she gave birth to Samuel and while he was a toddler, she returned to school in the field of psychology. When a university professor told her that she shouldn’t be taking a psychology class because women, like her, took the seats of men that could be there in class, she was hurt but she persevered. A few years later, Shendrine became one of the first Black women chemists at the National Institutes for Health, NIH; and later, a founder of a national group of Black chemists. For several years Shendrine was recruited to become a chemist in France, but she decided not to transplant the family. After the Russians launched Sputnik, the US became very interested in improving science education and Shendrine, as well as a lot of scientists, became concerned and involved in secondary school curricula. With Dudley’s support, she went back to the university to earn a master’s degree in science education and she became a secondary school science teacher. She taught first in Baltimore, Maryland, then, in Washington DC: at the same high school her children had attended.
By now, Shendrine and Dudley had started an important enterprise. Given a rise in single female-headed households and the economic recessions of the 1950s, they began to feed ‘down and out’ families in the Washington, D.C. area. Taking donations from local merchants, and adding scarce funds of their own, they prepared food baskets weekly, often feeding as many as thirty families. When some other ministers told Dudley he should be concentrating on building his own church and collecting funds, Shendrine supported his efforts by helping put the packages together and getting driving directions for him. For almost 30 years they continued this ‘ministry’ together.
Once Shendrine had been teaching at McKinley Tech High School in Washington DC, for a few years, she put another set of talents to work. She enjoyed the church, she enjoyed music (she had played the piano since she was a child), and she really enjoyed teenagers, so she and a group of students started the high school Gospel Choir. There was some hesitation at first, some saw a problem with religious origin music in a public school, but Shendrine assured them that the choir was a good activity, that it was non-denominational, and it served to preserve a rich musical and communal connection for Black Americans-and anyone else who wanted to sing. Even though the school was about 90% Black, there were non-Black students in the choir at various times.
Shendrine also worked in the community insofar as politics was concerned. Her father, Ezra had been a Republican—recruited by the local politicians soon after he got off the boat. Shendrine was also a Republican, and she supported the party during the 1950s. She volunteered to be a civilian air spotter for several years, taking her duty turns during several periods of the Cold War Era. When President Eisenhower had a heart attack, she sent him a card and was most proud of Mamie Eisenhower’s thank-you note back. She was also proud of the Freedom’s Foundation medal she received. At the family dinner table politics was always served as well—Dudley was a New Deal Democrat, and discussions that the children were encouraged to participate in ranged from the accepting gifts scandal of Richard Nixon to the newly emerging countries of Africa and the Caribbean. Her usual goal was not to argue or change minds; it was to air opinions and discuss possibilities. In 1977, she was very pleased to attend the graduation of her son, Samuel, at Columbia University. He had fulfilled one of her dreams; even though it wasn’t medical, he had become a doctor. For her 40th wedding anniversary, Shendrine and Dudley traveled to Asia—she had always wanted to go, they enjoyed each other’s company even after their children had moved away from home.
In 1985, Shendrine retired from teaching high school, but over the next five years she would teach pre-school and design curriculum. In 1990, for their 50th anniversary, Dudley and Shendrine renewed their vows with almost 100 of the original wedding participants, and in the early 90s she greeted the birth of her only grand daughter, Antonia, with great joy. She lived simply with Dudley until he passed in September 1997, and unhappy to be without him, Alzheimer’s brought her to a quiet sigh of death in 1999.
Shendrine believed in the American Dream, and she lived a part of it. Like many Black immigrants, she valued and excelled in education. As a teacher she believed her role was to help students learn chemistry—more than three dozen former students came to her funeral to attest to her influence. She also held strong support for working with people of different cultures and valuing the African and Caribbean cultures here in the US. She was a patriot and a parent; an educator and a doer. She was very smart, but always found time to listen to new opinions. And she loved Dudley with all of her heart from the moment she saw him at that picnic until she died.
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