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Kamilah Kashanie (KK): If you’ve been listening to StoryCorps for a while, you know that our archive at the Library of Congress holds thousands of conversations between friends and loved ones. A good amount of them are about things we can all relate to. Like courage. The courage to love, to share your heart, and to work towards goals that can sometimes be so much bigger than just yourself.
So on this season of the StoryCorps podcast from NPR, we’re bringing you stories of trailblazers — people who pushed boundaries and broke barriers. From the 82 year old woman who became the oldest person to reach outer space, to the first Black women to join the Coast Guard, to the man whose research helped make heart surgery what it is today.
I’m your host, Kamilah Kashanie. And on this episode, we’re talking all about medicine,and the people who made some life saving achievements, literally.
First we’re going to go back to the 1940s. Back then, Dr. Charles R. Drew was the chief of surgery at Freedmen’s Hospital in Washington D.C., now it’s called Howard University hospital. Dr. Drew did a lot of work with blood. Learning how it works, how it can be stored, how it’s transfused, all that kinda stuff. During World War II, his research made it possible to get blood to injured soldiers on the battlefield, saving countless lives.
Earlier this year, his daughter, Dr. Charlene Drew Jarvis, came to StoryCorps with her son Ernest Drew Jarvis to remember her father and his work.
Charlene Drew-Jarvis (CDJ): My dad was a taskmaster. He was fair. He was demanding, and that drive for excellence was something that all of us felt, whether it was his children, whether it was his nurse. And that drive felt like a horse that never went to sleep.
He is referred to as the father of blood banking. But during the Second World War, the Red Cross denied the right of African Americans to give blood, which meant that Dr. Drew, having discovered ways of storing and preserving blood and plasma, couldn’t himself have been a donor. When they changed that policy, it led to the segregation of blood. But my father said there is no scientific reason why there should be segregation and further than that, he said, “You need the blood. We are at war.”
But there was another way in which Dr. Drew felt very strongly. Training African American residents, who were denied by the American Medical Association the opportunity to staff hospitals. So, before he died, he trained most of the African American surgeons in this country. I think Dr Drew would call himself a determined teacher and surgeon, and if that took taking a stand, that’s what he did.
KK: Dr. Drew was really passionate about giving his residents as many opportunities to learn as possible. One night, he was driving three of them to a medical conference.
CDJ: My father had been at the hospital all day, he had had surgery. He had been to an event in the evening. And they started out almost at midnight. My father was driving when he fell asleep and the car pulled to one side and he pulled it back, and in the process, the car flipped and injured him grievously.
KK: The other people in the car with him had some minor injuries, and they were all treated at the nearest hospital, which was segregated. And while Dr. Drew was able to receive care, they couldn’t save him.
Ernest Drew-Jarvis (EDJ): When you were a kid, how much did you know about the work that your father was doing?
CDJ: I didn’t know until he died. I was eight years old. My mother felt that it was better that we not be at the service. And I was at school that day. When the funeral procession left, it went by my school and I saw the cars going by and the cars went by, and they went by. And I was simply astounded that there were so many people who had come to memorialize him. That made me understand that so many people revered him.
It is an enormous thing to think about even now. At such an early age, he was 45 years old, to have done so much in such a little bit of time is the legacy that I have. You know, I call him Dr. Drew because it is honorific. He has become a man of the ages. A man of the ages, I don’t know, from my perspective, is not someone who is called daddy. He’s taken his place in the lexicon of history. And I wonder, Ernie, about what you think is the legacy?
EDJ: The legacy continues as a contribution to help all mankind irrespective of race and prolong the human life. I will carry these conversations on to my children, who will then carry these conversations on to theirs. They will all know that Dr. Drew blazed a path for them.
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KK: That’s Ernest Drew Jarvis with his mom Dr Charlene Drew-Jarvis.
Around the same time Dr. Drew was researching blood in D.C, a young lab assistant was making breakthroughs in heart surgery in Baltimore. More on that after a short break. Stay with us.
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KK: Vivien Thomas grew up in Nashville. His dad was a carpenter, but Viven had dreams of being a doctor.
He enrolled in college as pre-med, his finances took a hit and he had to drop out. But even though he never graduated from college, he landed a job as the assistant to a surgeon named Dr. Alfred Blalock.
Jerry Harris (JH): Dr. Blalock caught him one day reading books, and asked him why was he reading the books. And he explained that he wanted to become a surgeon. So Dr. Blalock showed him a few things. Vivien caught on very fast. and before you know it, he was performing experiments for Dr. Blalock.
KK: That’s Jerry Harris. He came to StoryCorps in 2017 with his friend Fred Gilliam.
Fred and Jerry were both lab technicians who trained under Vivien Thomas when he was the director of Surgical Research Laboratories at Johns Hopkins.
And like Dr. Thomas, neither of them had any formal surgery experience or training. Fred was actually fresh out of high school when Dr. Thomas offered him a job. But Dr. Thomas thought it was important to mentor other Black men, so he taught them.
Here’s Jerry.
JH: There weren’t any Black physicians, at Hopkins anyway. I used to see Vivien and I used to be in awe of him.
Fred Gilliam (FG): Yeah. He kind of took me under his wing and he obviously saw something in me that I maybe didn’t see in myself. ‘Cause we were probably the first African Americans in Hopkins to be recognized in lab coats with our names on. All the other African Americans that worked at Hopkins were cleaning, housekeeping, or in food service.
So, he was a father figure as well as a mentor. Back then there was smoking allowed in the buildings, and he would always have his pipe. He’d come through. He’d stop if we were working in our respective labs and he’d peep over your shoulder and he wouldn’t hesitate to say, “Well, you’re getting ready to make a mistake”. But when he would puff on that pipe, smile, and walk out, you knew you were doing your job.
JH: He had patience. He would never raise his voice. And he realized there were things that you had to learn. He knew you were going to make mistakes at times. He would correct them, but in a way that you wouldn’t be nervous.
FG: It was mind boggling. I had no medical experience, and he took me under his wing and he taught me everything I needed to know. We were able to perform surgical procedures alone. I remember there was one time in the critical part of the operation a doctor became ill and he fainted. And Vivien was walking by the time. And I’m standing there, and he said, “Well, no you go ahead and finish it.” [Laughs] And I was stunned but I wasn’t shocked. And I think that was one of the days that I grew up as a surgeon.
KK: Just want to clarify, this operation was being done on an animal. This was a research lab, so they were doing medical experiments.
And Dr. Thomas wasn’t even technically a surgeon at Hopkins. So even though he was operating regularly, he was classified and paid as an unskilled lab assistant. And since he didn’t have an official medical degree, Dr. Thomas was never allowed to operate on a living patient anyway. So they worked on all kinds of animals.
FG: At the time we were using dogs, cats, pigs, gosh, goats, you name it.
JH: We worked with domestic animals as well as wild animals.
FG: Wild animals. He was amazing in that Vivien was a specialist from head to toe. Neurosurgery. Gastrointestinal. Orthopedics. Cardiac. You name it, and he could do it. And not only could he do it, he could teach it.
JH: Vivien did not get the credit for the things that he developed. At the particular time, no one believed that you could operate on a heart. People that had heart disease, they just died. He designed and made instruments.
FG: Curved cutting needle. Straight cutting needle.
JH: He developed a respirator. In order to do procedures, a patient had to be intubated and something had to breathe for him. Babies, their lungs weren’t fully developed. And it was found out that the reason why, because of mom’s nutrition. Out of that program, WIC was formed.
FG: I didn’t realize the significance of his accomplishments until post Hopkins.
JH: I think Vivien’s greatest accomplishment was just training, teaching, and mentoring young men. Historically there were so many, many cures and procedures that came out of what we did.
JH: But we weren’t appreciated, I don’t think. How many people knew that there were 26 Black technicians in that lab, and what they were doing?
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KK: This was the 60s. So it was pretty normal across the country for non white people to be excluded from common spaces. The fact that there were Black folks with white coats on at the time was mind boggling in itself.
When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated in 1968, Fred and Jerry were still at Hopkins. The city of Baltimore, like a lot of others, saw some riots. Six people died, a lot more were injured, and hundreds of private and public spaces were burned. Fred, Jerry and the rest of the Black staff watched the fight for equality happen right in their backyards.
FG: We were on the 12th floor, and we could see the whole city. I remember the day it actually broke out and Vivi and I were standing together at the window. He looked out and you could see how he was hurt by it.
JH: At the time, you know, there was segregation. A lot of places he could not go.
FG: He wasn’t allowed to even socialize or party with some of the same people that he trained. As a matter of fact, when Dr. Blalock had a party, he would have to enter through the back door and would have to bartend. He wouldn’t talk much about it, but I think deep down inside that bothered him. Because some of these same professors and doctors, he said after hours, they would stay in the lab and drink together. But he could not go out in the public and drink with them, or he couldn’t go to their homes and drink with them openly. Sometimes he would call me in the office and he would tell me some of the stories and I realized some of the things that he kept to himself for so long.
KK: Despite the discrimination they were facing, the Black surgical techs leaned on each other to get their work done at Hopkins. And in between all the surgery, they built in quality time with each other.
JH: Working in the surgical research lab was one of the high points of my life.
FG: I think we had probably the best job in the world back then. In between surgeries or during breaks, we had a little basketball hoop on the door. We used to shoot paper balls. We even had water battles. We start out with a small syringe and then it wound up somebody getting the hose.
BOTH: [Laughs]
JH: Yeah, it was a fun time. That lab, that was unity.
FG: Vivien would come through, chuckle, and keep moving. He would never tell us to stop. It was a good relationship. He was an excellent mentor and for me, coming from a fatherless home, he represented a father figure. And I also considered him a friend. The very first car I had purchased, somebody hit me in the rear, and I was without a car for two weeks. So, he came by my house every day and picked me up and took me to work. Never accepted a penny. I couldn’t offer him anything.
JH: And I think the other thing that he took pride in, the way he would address his wife and his kids, he was showing us that’s what you’re supposed to do.
FG: The most important lesson he taught me was to never be content with where I was and to always look to better myself.
JH: He genuinely cared about the technicians, the physicians that came through there. And ultimately Vivien wanted us all to become M.D.s.
FG: Yes I think he had that desire. I don’t feel I’m part of his legacy, but I feel blessed and privileged to have been part of his history. If I had the opportunity today, I’d just thank him for being who he was in my life, at that time in my life.
JH: I would just thank him for the expertise and knowledge that he bestowed on me. Being there for me. And if I fell, he was there to pick me up.
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KK: That’s Jerry Harris and his friend Fred Gilliam in Baltimore, Maryland, who spent decades doing research at Johns Hopkins, carrying on the legacy of Dr. Vivien Thomas. Johns Hopkins did eventually give Dr. Thomas an honorary doctorate in 1976. He died in 1985.
These two men in this episode did cutting edge work and made life-saving discoveries, but like Ernest Drew said earlier, they also made lasting impacts on the people they taught and on the people who came after them.
That’s all for this episode of the StoryCorps Podcast.
It was produced by me, and edited by Laila Oweda. Our executive editor is Jasmyn Morris. Our technical director is Jarrett Floyd, who also composed our theme song. This episode was fact checked by Zanna McKay. Special thanks to Alletta Cooper, Emily Martinez, and Jey Born.
To see what music we used in the episode, go to StoryCorps – dot – org, where you can also check out original artwork created for this season by Lyne Lucien.
For the StoryCorps podcast, I’m Kamilah Kashanie. Catch you next week.
