An African American, Dr. Charles Drew of Howard University, discovered the process for preserving blood, which made it possible to establish blood banks. Another African-American inventor, Frederick McKinley Jones, invented a container making it possible to store blood for battlefield use. Jones designed the special refrigeration unit that kept blood serum fresh for transfusions and medicines.
Jones was one of the most prolific inventors ever, black or white. He patented more than 60 inventions in his lifetime. While more than 40 of those patents were in the field of refrigeration, in addition to the procedure for blood plasma, he is also famous for inventing an automatic refrigeration system for long-haul trucks and railroad cars.
Dr. Drew was an African-American surgeon who pioneered methods of storing blood plasma for transfusion and organized the first large-scale blood banks in the world. He made some remarkably groundbreaking discoveries in the storage and processing of blood for transfusions.
Dr. Drew set up the blood bank for Great Britain and was credited by the government with saving the lives of thousands of English people maimed by bombs and shrapnel from the nightly air raids of Hitler’s bombers.
In 1941, British leaders cabled him that they were eternally grateful for his contribution and, now that their own blood banks were operative, his services were no longer required.
As U.S. involvement in the war loomed more certain each day, the National Research Council of the Red Cross recognized the need to establish its own blood bank program and in 1941 hired Dr. Drew to develop and administer the monumental task. He was called upon to undertake the mammoth operation. But deep-seated racism in American society dictated otherwise. Otherwise.
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.”
Initially, the Red Cross sided with most renowned scientists and the American Medical Association in support of the fact that there was no factual basis for segregating blood by race. Leaders of both groups concluded, “No soldier bleeding and about to die on the battlefield is going to arise from the operating table and say, ‘Stop, doctors! Wait a minute! If you are not absolutely positive that not one single drop of that blood is from a Negro – let me die.’”
But bigoted members of the mass media and elected officials, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt, objected to the proposal. Unfortunately, several weeks later, the Red Cross, caving-in to demands of political racists, sided with reactionary racist forces who claimed that the “red blood from white Americans differed from the red blood of black Americans.” The Red Cross withdrew its offer to Dr. Drew.
Dr. Drew protested the segregation of blood and resigned his position as director of the Red Cross Blood Bank Program.
“I watched my own blood bring life to a dying white man. He wasn’t poisoned, and he didn’t turn black. I have examined the blood of every race and every nationality conceivable, examined it in every way known to science, and I can assure you there is no difference,” Dr. Drew wrote in his letter of resignation in 1942.
“When you came to me in the beginning, you didn’t say I was the best Negro for the job. You said I was the best man for the job. But how can I, a Negro, stay on as medical director of a program in which Negro blood is not wanted or at best is segregated?”
Not until 1949 did the U.S., military stop the segregation of banked blood.
William L. Clay represented Missouri’s 1st Congressional District from 1968-2000 and is the author of “Clarence Thomas: A Black Knight in Tainted Armor,” “The Jefferson Bank Confrontation,” “Bill Clay: A Political Voice at the Grass Roots,” “Racism in the White House: A Common Practice of Most United States,” “Just Permanent Interests: Black Americans in Congress, 1870–1991” and “To Kill or Not to Kill: Thoughts on Capital Punishment.”
