Sylvester James Gates Jr., the first African American to hold an endowed chair in physics at a major American research institution, is an expert in supersymmetry/ superstring theory, an increasingly hot topic. This past fall, a PBS special, The Elegant Universe, included Gates' groundbreaking research dating back to the 1970s, when he completed the first Ph.D. thesis on supersymmetry at MIT. Much of his work is aimed at explaining the ultimate nature of the universe, or extending Einstein's theory of relativity. Daniel Chapman is unusual in that, by age 17, he already held two bachelor of science degrees (math and physics). Last fall, just after enrolling in the graduate program at the University of Maryland, where Gates is director of the Center for String and Particle Theory, Chapman passed the qualifying examination for the Ph.D.

Gates: When I was 6, my father brought home some books on space travel, and from reading them I understood that the lights in the sky were not just things you could look at, but places you could go.

Chapman: I've always been interested in astronomy and, like all kids, was fascinated with space travel. When I was 8, I'd often look at field guides to astronomy and read through them. When I was accepted into college [at age 11] as a special student, I knew that I wanted to go into physics.

Gates: Physics is one of the most difficult things you can choose to do. When you get your Ph.D., there's no guarantee you're going to continue to find a path. You have to prove yourself in a hostile environment.

Chapman: You definitely can't rest on your laurels. You have to keep pumping out research.

Gates: I tell young black scholars you can't assume people are for you or against you. You just have to present good science ... But the truth is, only about 0.05% of all theoretical physicists are African-American.

Chapman: It's a close-knit community. Physics may never be as popular as athletics and entertainment, but the only way that figure's going to change is to make mathematics and science more appealing to middle school-aged kids.

Gates: Most people don't know this, but before MLK, Albert Einstein spoke more forcefully for the rights of African Americans than any other Nobel laureate in history. This is a little-known fact. When [opera star] Marion Anderson came to Princeton to sing and couldn't get a hotel room, she stayed at Einstein's house. And when [stage performer] Paul Robeson was working on the anti-lynching movement, Einstein was a supporter.

Chapman: I personally don't look at race when I'm working with my peers. But then, I can feel isolated in more ways than one: I'm 18, and everybody else is mid-20s. Also, I'm an interracial mix. My mother is white, and my father is black.

Gates: I'm trying to provide a unique, 4D view of our universe. This is really what string theory is about. It's an attempt to go beyond Einstein ... He was a great physicist, but no matter how great any one scientist is, subsequent generations will exceed that achievement. I've been fortunate to be part of a generation where we, apparently, have begun to make the next step. Some of the things I work on have to do with the structure of space and time.

Chapman: You have to picture in your mind what you're trying to get to.

Gates: Exactly. But for centuries science worked in the opposite way: You'd go out and build a laboratory, do an experiment, write down your results, then figure out an equation that explains those results.

Chapman: At this point, it's impossible to do it the old way, because the theory has gotten so far beyond the instruments. String theory deals with energies a billion, billion, billion greater than the energies that can be created in a laboratory.

Gates: This kind of physics is not something that'll show up in 10 or 20 years. We're walking around with these cellphones, but most people don't know the science they were based on is 150 years old. The physicist James Clark Maxwell wrote down four equations in the 1860s, and one of those equations said you could send signals through space. That's how these things work. [Points to his cellphone.]

Chapman: What's hot now is photonics: an area that combines physics, mathematics and computer science. It has plenty of applications that are becoming visible right now, like in fiber optics. You can use these ideas in the field to create new inventions.

Moderated by Kristal Brent Zook

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The Performers
Modern dancers Judith Jamison, 60, and Clifton Brown, 23

Dance Legend Judith Jameson with her pupil Clifton Brown

Losing an audition was the best thing that ever happened to Judith Jamison. That's when legendary choreographer Alvin Ailey, who watched Jamison try out for a television special in 1965, plucked the budding dancer to perform with his repertory company. Throughout the '70s, Jamison was the muse for some of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's most famous ballets, including the solo "Cry," which established her as the modern dance world's first box-office star. Today, she is the company's artistic director, an Emmy-winning choreographer (for a PBS special, "A Hymn for Alvin Ailey") and a Kennedy Center Honor recipient. Like the young Jamison, Clifton Brown is familiar with rejection. In 1998, Jamison passed him over at a company audition because of his sex (that year, the only opening was for a woman) and age (he was a freshman in the Ailey School/Fordham University BFA program). But she was so impressed, she decided to make room for him anyway. Brown is currently performing in "Black Milk" and "Night Creature."

Jamison: When Alvin started the company in the 1960s' climate of black power, everything in black dance fell into place. We all needed to be heard. The confusion came when people heard the voice and tried to put it in a little can and say, "If it's black dance, that must mean you have rhythm and are full of energy."

Brown: Today, I feel the term "black dance" is relative. Dance in general is hard to label, because it's a fusion of so many techniques: ballet, modern, jazz ...

Jamison: When we say the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, we mean exactly that. American as apple pie ... Our choreographers use all types of music: Moroccan, West African, Beethoven. There are pieces in our repertory now -- ones by Ron Brown, for instance -- that use contemporary music.

Brown: I like when choreographers use pop music. I grew up on music videos like Janet Jackson's "Nasty." That's the kind of dance I was familiar with, not concert dance. But when you combine the two, it's a different way of letting people know what my generation has to say. Right now I'm listening to Alicia Keys.

Jamison: Choreographers have always used what's going on in the culture. But there's a level I won't go to: bad language, gangsta rap or any kind of negativity. That's not to say I expect the shows to be holier than thou. There are rappers who will hit you in the right place. I think Russell and Puffy are wonderful. They're smart as whips. Still, there is a world outside of hip-hop.

Brown: I'm inspired by anything and everything. Lately I've been watching old movies, like "A Streetcar Named Desire" with Marlon Brando.

Jamison: Fabulous.

Brown: Theatricality doesn't come naturally to me, so I'm looking to see how actors use a subtle gesture to convey an emotion. Maybe I can find some of that in me and use it onstage.

Jamison: I don't know how these young dancers do it. They do so much more physically and yet take in so much more information. Back then we danced differently. There was more emphasis on expression than on technique. Today's dancers move differently, yet it's so right.

Moderated by Kenya Hunt

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The Historians
Academics Darlene Clark Hine, 57, and Michele Mitchell, 38

Darlene Clark Hine is the dean of a new generation of black female historians. Over the last quarter-century, she has offered critical input on documentaries like Eyes on the Prize, presided over the Organization of American Historians and published 21 books, including 1993's seminal encyclopedia Black Women in America. This fall, she launches a doctoral program in African-American Studies at Northwestern University. Setting the record straight about black women's contributions to America's greatness is a passion she shares with Michele Mitchell, a University of Michigan historian whose reflections on black women and "silences" -- especially those that need to be broken -- are intensely debated in academic circles. Mitchell's upcoming book, The Nation Reproduced: African Americans and the Politics of Racial Destiny After Reconstruction, examines gender and sexuality in black social thought.

Hine: I decided to become a historian as an undergraduate student [in the '60s]. I was very perplexed: I could not understand white racism or black anger or what the civil rights movement was all about. I desperately wanted to understand why a certain skin color, hair texture and facial features were markers of "inferiority."

Mitchell: The only time I would hear anything about black history in school was the second and a half we talked about slavery. I grew up in Albuquerque, where the black population is something like 2%. But I spent quite a bit of time at the library reading Lerone Bennett's volumes on black history. The way I learned about Jim Crow was from listening to family stories. I always thought it was peculiar that, when we'd visit relatives out of state, they would give us basically a picnic basket [for the drive home]. Then I realized that grew out of people traveling during segregation, because in the South they never really knew where they could stop to get food. That made me want to learn more. Then, when I got to college in the '80s, the Reagan era, one of the most compelling discussions on campus was apartheid. That took me back to those family stories.

Hine: When I wrote my first book, I depended a lot on oral testimony, which many historians didn't recognize as legitimate, because people's memories are so faulty. But I decided I needed to talk to everyday people to get a sense of who they are and what they think.

Mitchell: We have very simplistic notions of race in this country. Race is not just black. I have a number of students in my "Black Women in America" class who identify themselves as Jamaican-American, or come from Spanish-speaking households or have parents who are African immigrants. It's a complex room. And we need to understand that and not flatten out the experience.

Hine: History changes. And the history we're doing now is, in my opinion, the best we've been able to do in America. It's richer, fuller. Everybody has a place in it.

Mitchell: Comparative history is opening up so many avenues of inquiry about identity formation, about intra-racial class dynamics, gender, transnational connections.

Hine: When I started, I was accused of writing "feel-good history." My first response was flippant. I said, "It's about time someone writes something that makes women feel good." We want to celebrate the contributions of Madam C.J. Walker. We need to know about Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Mary McLeod Bethune. I need to understand the long trajectory of women who were active in all kinds of campaigns, from slavery to the civil rights movement: Dorothy Height, Fannie Lou Hamer ... At the same time, we cannot just say, "We were there." As historians, we have to be critical and understand the ways some of us were complicit in our own undoing. For example, the plotting of slave revolts was sometimes revealed to masters by other slaves. We can't remove the unsavory parts.

Mitchell: You cannot whitewash it. You just can't.

Hine: Historians are custodians of the past. [It's our job to] re-analyze and decide what's important and who will be remembered. That gives us power.

Moderated by Joan Morgan

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The Agents
Literary mavens Marie Dutton Brown, 63, and Mondella Jones, 32

In her nearly 40-year career, Marie Dutton Brown has consistently been a pioneer in African-American publishing. First establishing herself as an editor at Doubleday in the early '70s, she formed her own literary agency in 1984, thereby becoming one of the very few black agents in the book world. Among the writers she now represents are Randall Robinson, whose book "The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks," helped re-ignite a national debate on slavery reparations, and Trisha R. Thomas, whose debut novel, "Nappily Ever After," recently was optioned by Halle Berry to be made into a movie. Mondella Jones can be fairly described as Brown's protégé. A year ago, after working as an editor at "Black Issues Book Review," where she wrote about and promoted black literature, she, too, became an agent. Jones represents 11 new voices, including Bernadette Y. Connor, Sibylla Nash, Clifford Thompson and Terrance Dean. Her specialties are lifestyle and fiction.

Brown: A big part of being a literary agent is having contacts. But it's much more than that. You have to establish comfortable relationships with your clients. That's especially important to us, since we deal with writers who do not have as much access to the world of publishing as others might have.

Jones: Most writers don't realize there's a whole process before you approach a publisher. We don't just take the manuscript and send it out. There are steps, and we have to walk the client through them. Talking to your clients over the years, I know how much time you invest in them. They feel like they're building a career, as opposed to just getting a deal. That's my focus, too. I don't want them to be one-hit wonders.

Brown: I thought as an editor you had to be passionate about the books you acquire. But agents have to be even more passionate, because the writer comes to you earlier and then you have to go through rejection ... You have to go through that process where you may think a piece of writing is great but 10 editors do not.

Jones: Writers don't understand we're just as hurt when we get a rejection. I can't work on something if I don't love it. Remember how I called you after getting my first rejection? I was flustered. You said, 'A rejection? That's nothing. Get used to it and keep on going.' "

Brown: I'm motivated to leave a legacy with the works I represent. I look at my grandchildren and think they ought to know something of how we lived. That's a challenge. We don't have a broad enough depiction of African-American life, in fiction or non-fiction.

Jones: Right now it's like the movies. One movie does well, so you start getting a lot of different versions of that movie. But I pay attention to what people read on the train. It's far more diverse than what we're told.

Brown: African-American men read a wide range of books. But that's not reported.

Jones: I'd like to see more books about black history and culture. But things that you wouldn't expect, like black fiction with off-the-beaten-track experiences. For example, there's a project about blacks in the West, a wonderful book about a family of women who grew up on a ranch. The family owned the most property in the region. These stories need to be told.

Brown: When I came into publishing in the '60s, we would publish a book just because it was a great book and we wanted the public to know about it. We didn't think very much about the marketplace -- we thought about readers. There was no Barnes & Noble, no online.

Jones: As an agent, we now have to think not only about the writing and editing, but the marketing. I go through an exercise with all my writers. I ask them to go into a bookstore and look at the books up front, and ask themselves: "What is going to make a reader pick up my book?" I'm thinking about these questions right from the beginning. Books are competing with a lot of other things today: DVDs, video games, CDs.

Brown: Oh, I think I'm going to go to bed. I haven't thought about any of this!

Jones: Another thing is that we have a lot of African-American books that could have a broader audience, but they're only marketed to black readers.

Brown: That's absolutely true. There are editors who have one or two black writers on their list, but there aren't many who specialize in African- American life and culture -- which is why we need more young people like you to get into this line of work. I'd

love African-American youngsters to understand that if they love books, there's a place for them.

Moderated by Jamie Malanowski

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The Conservatives
Politicians J.C. Watts, 46, and Angela Sailor, 35

Last year, J.C. Watts retired from Congress as the only African American ever to have held a Republican leadership position. He served eight years in the House of Representatives, where, in his first term, he introduced a bill to revitalize poor neighborhoods. Watts entered politics after leading the Oklahoma Sooners to two Orange Bowl titles and went on to be a star of the GOP and a bridge between Republicans and the black community. As recently as 2000, he was touted as a possible vice presidential candidate. Fellow conservative Angela Sailor knocks on doors to educate voters about the political process. From 2001 to 2003, she was associate director of the White House Office of Public Liaison. She is now adviser to the secretary of Education.

Watts: I think you can be black and be Republican, or be conservative and not carry the Confederate flag. What black conservatives have fought for is to say, "Let's look at new ways of dealing with old problems like poverty, education and health care."

Sailor: When someone says, "I'm a conservative," people tend to think, "Oh, you're not compassionate about social issues. You don't care about the needy, the poor, the disadvantaged -- just business and taxes." But I do think that business and taxes help the needy. And really, when I call myself a conservative, I'm talking from a values standpoint. I don't believe in abortion; I just don't. That is something in God's hands ... Of course, there are some exceptions.

Watts: I saw some numbers about three years ago that said 35% to 37% of the black community doesn't identify with the Democratic Party. They didn't say they identified with the Republican Party, either, but they were looking for a place to land. Republicans have to take seriously this effort to grow the party and capture some of that base. You have to do long-term, entrepreneurial outreach.

Sailor: One thing that's key in conversations I've had with people looking at both parties is understanding what real political involvement means. Many think it's just voting, not how they could be a delegate to the national convention. [They don't ask,] "Am I involved in my state party politics as an officer, or just doing some grass-roots advocacy? Do I feel like I can call my congressman and say, 'I disagree with so-and-so. I would like to see you support X, Y and Z'?"

Watts: I don't look for anything miraculous to happen in '04, in terms of the black vote. But I do think what we see on the state level with black Republicans being elected to the House and the Senate and school boards and county commissions -- that's where the action is in terms of the black Republican.

Sailor: There's definitely a relationship issue in terms of how you rebuild the relationship with the black community [to the way it] was back in the day of Frederick Douglass.

Watts: Most black people don't think alike; we just vote alike ... and I think the black vote will continue to be marginalized if you have a blind loyalty to any one party. It's not just the black vote. It's the Hispanic vote, the female vote, in terms of demographics, as they would break it down in boardrooms and political committee meetings. Whenever a constituency takes itself off the market and says, "Hey, we're committed, come hell or high water," the vote's always marginalized.

Moderated by Tameka L. Hicks

Photographs of Jamison and Brown by Keith Major for USA WEEKEND. Styling by Carlton Jones. Clothing for Brown: F.A.L. by Jeffrey Grub. Clothing for Jamison: dress by Geoffrey Holder, shawl by Issey Miyake