Charles Drew
by Nicholas St. Fleur
Credit: Permission granted by Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Behring Center, Smithsonian Institution.
Charles Drew
Every 2 seconds, a person in the US needs to receive a blood transfusion, according to the American Red Cross. Since the 1940s, countless people around the world have received a second chance at life thanks to medical advancements made by Charles Drew, the father of the blood bank.
Drew was born in 1904 in Washington, DC. An athlete since a young age, he attended Amherst College on a scholarship for football and track and field. Though he excelled against challenges on the grass and gravel, he faced racism and segregation both in athletics and in academics. After graduation, Drew pursued medical studies at McGill University College of Medicine, a place known for treating its Black students with more respect than similar institutions in the US. In 1933, he graduated second in his class of 137.
He had a keen interest in blood transfusions, but like all Black scholars, he was barred from pursuing this interest at the Mayo Clinic, where he had hoped to study. So he began work at Howard University School of Medicine as a teacher, and enrolled at Columbia University to pursue a doctorate degree. In his graduate research, he found that blood could be preserved longer once the plasma and the red blood cells were separated. This insight extended how long blood could be stored from a couple of days to a week. This discovery was well timed: World War II was breaking out in Europe. Britain, in need of Drew’s expertise, called on him to start a blood bank in 1940.
The American Red Cross too called upon Drew. He fought against the group’s insistence that Black and White blood be segregated, because there was no scientific merit for the separation. Drew eventually resigned in protest because the organization refused to end the practice.
On April 1, 1950, at the age of 45, Drew overturned his car while driving through North Carolina to a medical conference. He was rushed to a segregated White hospital, and despite receiving a blood transfusion, died of his severe wounds. Mere months after his death, the Red Cross ended its segregated blood donation program, ending one of the final racial barriers that Drew poured his blood and sweat into toppling.
