Day 26 Black History Month 2021 - Dr. Charles Richard Drew

Dr. Charles Richard Drew (June 1904 – April 1950)

For day 26 of Black History Month, we’d like to highlight Dr. Charles Richard Drew an American inventor, researcher and surgeon.

Charles Drew grew up in the Foggy Bottom community of Washington D.C. After graduating high school, he went on to attend Amherst College in Massachusetts on an athletic scholarship. He joined the Omega Psi Phi fraternity as an off-campus member, since Amherst College fraternities did not admit African Americans at the time. After graduating college, he spent the next two years as a professor of Biology and Chemistry at the historically black college, Morgan State University in Baltimore Maryland. In 1933, he received a Doctor of Medicine and Master of Surgery degree from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

In 1938, he started post-graduate work at the University of Columbia in New York City earning a Doctor of Science in surgery. During his time at Columbia, he did research in and presented his doctoral thesis on “banked blood” based on years of research on techniques of preserving blood. His research and thesis, would eventually lead him to inventing the first blood banks and “bloodmobiles,” which where refrigerated trucks of stored blood.

During World War 2, he played a significant role in developing some of the first large scale blood banks, which saved thousands of soldiers lives. In 1941, he would go on to be appointed the Director of the first American Red Cross blood bank. During his time with the American Red Cross, he vehemently protested against racial segregation of blood because there was no scientific foundation for the practice. He would resign a year later because the American Red Cross and the United States Armed Forces would not change their practices or policies to segregate blood based on race.

“I feel that the recent ruling of the United States Army and Navy regarding the refusal of colored blood donors is an indefensible one from any point of view. As you know, there is no scientific basis for the separation of the bloods of different races except on the basis of the individual blood types or groups.” – Dr. Charles Richard Drew