BHS Day 20: Charles Drew

Hi! Finally we get to the M third of our Spotlight and yet another person I've been waiting to feature for years. It's times when I have to keep repeating why I have yet to feature someone despite their being on my radar that I'm reminded why I wanted to do this series in the first place. Because Black History--minority history in general, actually--education is lacking so much in many schools, you can get the impression that there are only so many pioneers. It's not hard to end up with the wrong idea that you've learned about the heavyweights when the reality is that it's not even the tip of the iceberg. There are so many inventions and innovations to things we now consider everyday objects that can be attributed to someone Black, and this often gets swept under the rug when the same select few are touted as the only ones who made a difference. Today's entrant is someone I'd never even heard of until shortly before I started this series three years ago, but because of the importance of the things he innovated, I strongly feel that I should have learned about him much earlier. Check out today's further reading/resource links; I included a lot of info here but I left off some things in hopes you'd read them. 

Source

Name: Charles Drew, 1904-1950 Profession: Surgeon, instructor, medical researcher Why is the Spotlight on him today? For revolutionizing the medical field as we know it today and saving millions of lives in the process Notables:
--Discovered a safe way to store blood over long periods of time, giving birth to the concept of donating blood that would not immediately be used
--Discovered a safe way to transport blood, which were later coined 'bloodmobiles'  --Won the James E. Walker Memorial trophy in high school for being the school's best all-around athlete
--Was part of his college's medical honorary society Alpha Omega Alpha --Introduced the first blood bank of its kind in both America and England (a similar functioning one was already in circulation in the Soviet Union but it was lesser known)
--Came in 2nd out of 127 graduates in his medical class --Was his college football team's MVP during his junior year and was added to the All-American team, winning the Thomas W. Ashley Memorial trophy for his efforts --Was awarded the Howard Hill Mossman trophy for contributing the most to his college's athletics program during his tenure at the school --Was awarded the Rockefeller Foundation Research Fellowship after his time as a resident at Freedmen's Hospital
--Was the first Black doctor to be appointed as an examiner by the American Board of Surgery
--Was a professor and athletics director at Morgan State University, where he turned the school's basketball and football teams into champions
--Was the first Black resident at Presbyterian Hospital in New York
--Was the first Black medical resident to receive a doctorate in Medical Science from Columbia University
--Created the first series of tests to diagnose early shock and helped with the studies into different types of shock and how they affect the body 
--Innovated the way plasma was used as a blood substitute through his studies of the differences between the two
--Served as the Supervisor of the Blood Transfusion Association for New York
--Ended his work with the Red Cross due to segregation between White and Black donor blood deposits
--Was awarded the NAACP Spingarn Medal for his work
--Served as the head of Howard University's Department of Surgery and the Chief of Surgery at the Freedmen's Hospital simultaneously
--Received two honorary degrees throughout his career for his work Further reading links: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 


Quotes of the Day: 
"While one must grant at once that extraordinary talent, great intellectual strength and unusual opportunity are necessary to break out of this prison of the Negro problem, we believe that the Negro in the field of physical sciences has not only opened a small passageway to the outside world, but is carving a road in many untrod areas, along which later generations will find it more easy to travel. The breaching of these walls and the laying of this road has not been, and is not easy.”
"So much of our energy is spent in overcoming the constricting environment in which we live that little energy is left for creating new ideas or things. Whenever, however, one breaks out of this rather high-walled prison of the "Negro problem" by virtue of some worthwhile contribution, not only is he himself allowed more freedom, but part of the wall crumbles. And so it should be the aim of every student in science to knock down at least one or two bricks of that wall by virtue of his own accomplishment."
--Charles Drew