Charles Drew

Dates: June 3, 1904 - April 1, 1950

Occupation: physician, scientist

Charles Drew, the Athlete

Charles Richard Drew was the first born of carpet layer Richard Thomas Drew and teacher Nora Burrell. Drew’s childhood was much like other African Americans of the time, except for his exceptional athletic ability. His athletic talent, which later would help fund his college education, emerged in high school. After graduating in 1922 with honors from Dunbar High School, his athleticism carried him into college. He received an athletic scholarship to Amherst College, where he played football.

By 1926, the same year that he graduated from Amherst, he was certain that he wanted to become a doctor. Drew, however, could not afford medical school. To earn money, he taught chemistry, biology, and was the director of athletics at Morgan State College in Baltimore, Maryland. Two years later, he resigned and began attending McGill University Medical School in Canada.

Drew Pursues a Medical Career

While in medical school, he studied blood transfusions with Dr. John Beattie, a visiting professor from England. Through his studies, his interest in blood transfusions and blood storage was peaked. However, after graduating from medical school in 1933 with a Master of Surgery degree, his interest in blood was put on hold for five years. He served as professor of pathology at Howard University and completed a one-year residency at the Freedmen’s Hospital.

Drew Makes a Lifesaving Discovery

In 1938, Drew received a two-year Rockefeller Fellowship to study blood at Columbia University Presbyterian Hospital in New York. While at Columbia, Drew made a remarkable discovery. At the time, stored blood only lasted seven days; Drew discovered that by using plasma, blood without the cells, it could be stored longer.

This was both a revolutionary discovery and a timely one. England was entering into World War II, and blood was essential to saving the lives of injured soldiers. In 1940, Drew’s discovery led to his recruitment to take charge of collecting, organizing, and sending blood plasma to England. One year later, when his position ended, he became the director of the American Red Cross’ program to collect blood.

As he had done for the English program, he was in charge of all aspects of blood collection. In the midst of his work for the American Red Cross, the military made a controversial decision. It ordered the segregation of blood from African American donators. Drew and other medical professionals argued, albeit without success, that there was no difference between white and African American blood. Nevertheless, segregated blood became military policy.

Drew Returns to Howard University

In May 1941, Drew made the hard decision to resign from his position as the director of the American Red Cross. Some scholars have asserted that he left in protest of the segregated blood issue. However, according to scholar Louis Haber, in an interview with Drew’s widow, she stated that his reason for leaving was to return to his real passion, the practice of surgery. Drew left the Red Cross, and returned to Howard University and to the resident training program in surgery at the Freedmen’s Hospital.

At the time, Drew was one of the few African American physicians who were held in such high regard in the medical community. It is not hard to see why. In addition to his discovery of plasma use, he also was the first African American to earn a Doctor of Science degree (1940) and he became the first black surgeon examiner of the American Board of Surgery (1942). For his plasma work, he received the NAACP Spingarn Medal in 1944.

Unfortunately, Charles Drew died young. On April 1, 1950, while driving three of his students to a medical meeting at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, Drew fell asleep at the wheel. His passengers only suffered injuries, but Drew did not survive.

Sources:

Haber, Louis, Black Pioneers of Science and Invention, Harcourt, 1970. McMurrary, Emily (Editor), Notable Twentieth-Century Scientists, Gale Research Inc., 1995.