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From the Archives: Iota @ 100 - Charles Richard Drew

Published on 2/26/2020

Charles Richard Drew(June 3, 1904 – April 1, 1950) was an American surgeon and medical researcher. He researched in the field of blood transfusions, developing improved techniques for blood storage, and applied his expert knowledge to developing large-scale blood banks early in World War II. This allowed medics to save thousands of lives of the Allied forces. As the most prominent African American in the field, Drew protested against the practice of racial segregation in the donation of blood, as it lacked scientific foundation, and resigned his position with the American Red Cross, which maintained the policy until 1950.

 

Drew was born in 1904 into an African-American middle-class family in Washington, D.C. His father, Richard, was a carpet layer and his mother, Nora Burrell, trained as a teacher. Drew and three of his four younger siblings grew up in Washington's largely middle-class and interracial Foggy Bottom neighborhood. From 1920 until his marriage in 1939, Drew's permanent address was in Arlington County, Virginia, although he graduated from Washington's Dunbar High School in 1922 and usually resided elsewhere during that period of time.

 

Drew won an athletics scholarship to Amherst College in Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1926. An outstanding athlete at Amherst, Drew also joined Omega Psi Phi Fraternity as an off-campus member; Amherst fraternities did not admit blacks at that time. After college, Drew spent two years (1926–1928) as a professor of chemistry and biology, the first athletic director, and football coach at the historically black private Morgan College in Baltimore, Maryland, to earn the money to pay for medical school.

 

Drew attended medical school at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, where he achieved membership in Alpha Omega Alpha, a scholastic honor society for medical students, ranked second in his graduating class of 127 students, and received the standard Doctor of Medicine and Master of Surgery degree awarded by the McGill University Faculty of Medicine in 1933.

 

Drew's first appointment as a faculty instructor was for pathology at Howard University from 1935 to 1936. He then joined Freedman's Hospital, a federally operated facility associated with Howard University, as an instructor in surgery and an assistant surgeon. In 1938, Drew began graduate work at Columbia University in New York City on the award of a two-year Rockefeller fellowship in surgery. He then began postgraduate work, earning his Doctor of Science in Surgery at Columbia University. He spent time doing research at Columbia's Presbyterian Hospital and gave a doctoral thesis, "Banked Blood," based on an exhaustive study of blood preservation techniques. He earned a Doctor of Science in Medicine degree in 1940, becoming the first African American to do so.

 

In late 1940, before the U.S. entered World War II and just after earning his doctorate, Drew was recruited by John Scudder to help set up and administer an early prototype program for blood storage and preservation. He was to collect, test, and transport large quantities of blood plasma for distribution in the United Kingdom. Drew went to New York City as the medical director of the United States' Blood for Britain project. The Blood for Britain project was a project to aid British soldiers and civilians by giving U.S. blood to the United Kingdom.

 

Drew started what would be later known as bloodmobiles, which were trucks containing refrigerators of stored blood; this allowed for greater mobility in terms of transportation as well as prospective donations.

 

Drew created a central location for the blood collection process where donors could go to give blood. He made sure all blood plasma was tested before it was shipped out. He ensured that only skilled personnel handled blood plasma to avoid the possibility of contamination. The Blood for Britain program operated successfully for five months, with total collections of almost 15,000 people donating blood, and with over 5,500 vials of blood plasma. As a result, the Blood Transfusion Betterment Association applauded Drew for his work.



McGill University Sports Hall of Fame

 

 

Dr. Charles Drew was an exceptional graduate in many ways and in the fall of 2000, he was inducted into the McGill Sports Hall of Fame.

 

Dr. Charles Richard Drew was born in Washington, D.C., on June 3, 1904. He went on to study medicine at McGill after racism excluded him from U.S. schools.

 

In his first year, Drew broke the intercollegiate record in the 120-yard high hurdles with a time of 15.8 seconds, helping host McGill win the Tait MacKenzie trophy as Canadian senior intercollegiate track champions for the first time in four years.

 

In 1929-30, Drew won three events at the CIAU championships in Toronto, finishing first in the high jump with a distance 5 feet, 9.75 inches, first in the broad jump (21 feet, 8.4 inches) and first in the 110-yard high hurdles (16 seconds).

 

He captained the team in 1930-31 and was named CIAU meet champion, accounting for 11 of McGill's 70 points at the championships in Kingston. He won two gold medals at the meet, setting records in the 120-yard-high hurdles (16.2 seconds) and the broad jump (21 feet, 9.6 inches).

 

In 1931-32, Drew tied teammate James Worrall for gold in the high jump. He also won the 120-yard-high hurdles and the broad jump, bettering his own school records in front of the home crowd at McGill.

 

In 1932-33, Drew won the 120-yard high hurdles in 15.8 seconds, accounting for 11 of McGill's 73 points at the championship meet in Toronto. Drew also starred in the annual McGill inter-faculty meet to help the faculty of medicine win.

Drew guided McGill to five consecutive CIAU track and field championships from 1928-32 before graduating from medical school in 1933 with a M.D.C.M. He went on to be an intern and resident at the Montreal General and Royal Victoria hospitals.

 

Drew later was regarded as a pioneer in medicine, discovering the process for separating plasma from blood and storing it until needed. This medical breakthrough has been responsible for saving millions of lives as there had previously been no efficient way to store large quantities of blood for long periods of time.

 

He returned to Washington in 1935 where he accepted a teaching position at Howard University. By 1940, he had gained international fame after serving as a medical supervisor for the Blood for Britain program during World War II, director of a national blood program in the U.S.A., and as a surgical consultant for the U.S. army.

 

On April 1, 1950, Drew died at the age of 45 from injuries suffered in a fatal car accident while driving near Burlington, North Carolina. In 1981, the U.S. postal service issued a commemorative stamp in honor of his contributions to science.


In 1997, McGill honored the late physician by creating the Charles R. Drew Visiting Professorship.