Dr. Charles Drew was a medical innovator.  He was born on June 3, 1904. He was an African-American surgeon and hematologist who made pioneering discoveries about blood plasma and set up blood banks in the 1930s and 1940s.

From Washington, D.C. Charles Richard Drew was the oldest of five children. His father was Richard T. Drew was a carpet layer, and his mother was Nora (Burrell) Drew was a schoolteacher and graduate of Miner Teachers College. As a student, Drew excelled in academics and sports, winning four swimming medals by the age of eight. In 1922 he graduated from Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, where he received the James E. Walker Memorial Medal in his junior and senior years for his athletic performance in football, basketball, baseball, and track.

Drew attended Amherst College on an athletic scholarship. He was one of 16 Black students to graduate from Amherst during from 1920 to 1929. He was captain of the track team, popular, and collected several honors, including the Thomas W. Ashley Memorial Trophy for being the football team's MVP. Drew became interested in studying the vital fluid of life as a student at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, during the late 1920s and early 1930s. At that time, medical science had not yet determined how to preserve blood, a dilemma that became Drew's mission. While interning at Presbyterian Hospital in New York City and pursuing a doctorate at Columbia University, Drew discovered that unlike whole blood, which deteriorates after a few days in storage, blood plasma, the liquid portion of the blood without cells, can be preserved for long periods of time and substituted for whole blood in transfusions.

In the late 1930s Drew set up an experimental blood bank at Presbyterian Hospital and wrote a thesis entitled “Banked Blood: A Study in Blood Preservation,” which earned him a Doctor of Science in Medicine from Columbia University in 1940. Charles Drew's medical breakthrough helped save thousands of lives by making more blood available to the many people in need of transfusions. Drew's discovery came at an opportune time. In 1939 World War II broke out in Europe and by 1940 the British, in desperate need of blood in order to save the lives of injured soldiers, turned to the United States for help.

The Blood Transfusion Association chose Drew as the medical supervisor of the Blood for Britain program. Drew arranged for large amounts of plasma to be flown to England and set up several blood banks there. The American Red Cross enlisted Drew, in 1941, to establish a blood bank program in the United States. That same year, the U.S. War Department declared "it is not advisable to collect and mix Caucasian and Negro blood indiscriminately for later administration to members of the military forces.” Drew protested the segregation of blood and, as a result, was forced to resign his position as director of the Red Cross Blood Bank Program.

Not until 1949 did the U.S. military stop the segregation of banked blood. Before becoming an internationally renowned hematologist, Charles Drew established himself as a star athlete and a surgeon. Drew's accomplishments in football, basketball, baseball, and track at Dunbar High School earned him an athletic scholarship to Amherst College in Massachusetts. Following his World War II service and work with the American Red Cross, Drew returned to Howard University, where he taught and practiced surgery until his death in an automobile accident in 1950. Drew was awarded the NAACP's prestigious Spingarn Medal in 1944.

Reference:
Black Heroes of The Twentieth Century
Edited by Jessie Carney Smith
Copyright 1998 Visible Ink Press, Detroit, MI
ISBN 1-57859-021-3