Charles Drew (1904 – 1950)

The Father of Blood Banking

Charles Richard Drew was born on June 3, 1904, in Washington, D.C., into a middle-class African-American family. His father, Richard, was a carpet layer, and his mother, Nora, was a teacher. From an early age, Drew showed a propensity for both athletics and academics, excelling in football, track, and basketball at Dunbar High School.

Drew studied at Amherst College in Massachusetts on an athletic scholarship, where he graduated in 1926 with a degree in chemistry. To fund his medical school, he worked as a biology instructor and coach at Morgan College (now Morgan State University). His medical education took him to McGill University in Montreal, where he completed his M.D. and C.M. (Master of Surgery) in 1933, ranking second in his class.

His interest in blood transfusion was sparked during his residency at Montreal General Hospital. After returning to the U.S., Drew joined Howard University’s medical faculty in 1935. In 1938, he received a Rockefeller Fellowship to study at Columbia University, where his research on blood plasma led to his 1940 doctoral thesis, “Banked Blood: A Study in Blood Preservation.”

Drew’s work revolutionized blood storage. He developed methods for separating plasma from whole blood, allowing it to be dried and later reconstituted, greatly extending its shelf life. This was crucial during World War II when he led the “Blood for Britain” project, which involved gathering and shipping plasma to the U.K. for treating war casualties. His innovations included what would later be called bloodmobiles for mobile blood collection.

In 1941, Drew was appointed the first director of the American Red Cross Blood Bank, where he helped establish blood banks for the U.S. military. However, he resigned in protest in 1942 when the military insisted on segregating blood by race, a policy he publicly opposed as unscientific and discriminatory.

After his resignation, Drew returned to Howard University, becoming head of surgery and chief surgeon at Freedmen’s Hospital, where he trained many African-American surgeons. In 1944, he was awarded the Spingarn Medal by the NAACP for his contributions to medicine.

Tragically, Drew died on April 1, 1950, at the age of 45, in a car accident in North Carolina. There’s a persistent myth that he died because a hospital refused him a blood transfusion due to his race, but this is untrue; his injuries were too severe for any intervention to save him.

Further Reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_R._Drew

https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/spotlight/jg/feature/biographical

https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/drew-charles-r-1904-1950

https://jimcrowmuseum.ferris.edu/question/2004/august.htm