Charles Drew is famous for pioneering large-scale blood banking during World War II, work that saved thousands of lives and transformed how hospitals store and use blood. He was also one of the most prominent Black surgeons in American history, training a generation of African American physicians and publicly challenging the racist policy of segregating donated blood.
Blood for Britain
In 1940, as German bombing campaigns devastated London, British hospitals desperately needed blood plasma to treat wounded civilians and soldiers. Drew, then a young surgeon who had just completed his doctoral dissertation on blood preservation at Columbia University, was appointed medical director of the Blood for Britain (BFB) campaign. The project launched on August 16, 1940, and over the following months, Drew organized a massive collection and processing operation on American soil.
By the time the campaign concluded in January 1941, it had collected 14,556 blood donations and shipped more than 5,000 liters of plasma saline solution to England through the Red Cross. Drew’s final report on the project established him as one of the world’s leading experts on blood procurement and processing. The scale was unprecedented: no one had organized the collection, separation, and overseas shipment of blood products at anything close to this level before.
Building the First National Blood Program
The success of Blood for Britain led the American Red Cross to launch a pilot program in February 1941 to mass-produce dried plasma for U.S. military personnel. Drew was appointed assistant director. Dried plasma was a breakthrough for battlefield medicine because it could be stored far longer than whole blood and transported to field hospitals without refrigeration. Drew’s expertise in processing and preserving blood products made the program viable at a national scale, and it became the foundation for the military blood supply throughout the war.
His Stand Against Blood Segregation
Despite Drew’s central role in building America’s blood supply, the Red Cross and the U.S. military adopted a policy of segregating donated blood by the race of the donor. Black and white blood was labeled separately, stored separately, and administered only to patients of the same race. There was no scientific basis for this. Drew publicly called the policy out as an expression of scientific racism, not medicine.
Angered by the injustice, Drew resigned from the Red Cross program in 1942. The segregation policy remained in effect until 1950. His willingness to walk away from a program he had helped build, at the height of his professional influence, made him a significant figure in the broader civil rights struggle, years before the movement gained mainstream momentum.
Training a Generation of Black Surgeons
After leaving the Red Cross, Drew returned to Howard University’s medical school, where he led the Department of Surgery from 1941 until his death in 1950. At a time when most surgical training programs excluded Black physicians entirely, Drew’s department became the primary pipeline for African American surgeons in the country. Between 1941 and 1950, he trained more than half of the Black surgeons who achieved board certification during that period: eight out of the total. Another 14 who passed their boards later had received part of their training under him.
That record is remarkable given how short the window was. Drew was only 45 when he died, and his tenure at Howard lasted just nine years. Yet his students went on to staff hospitals and medical schools across the country, multiplying his influence for decades after his death.
Awards and Recognition
Drew’s contributions were recognized during his lifetime, though the full scope of his legacy took longer to appreciate. In 1944, the NAACP awarded him the Spingarn Medal, its highest honor, for his work on blood and plasma. He received honorary doctorates from Virginia State College in 1945 and Amherst College in 1947, and was elected to the International College of Surgeons in 1946. Today, the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles bears his name.
The Myth Surrounding His Death
Drew died on April 1, 1950, after a car accident in North Carolina. In the years that followed, a persistent story spread that he had bled to death after being refused treatment at a whites-only hospital. The story carried a bitter irony: the father of blood banking, killed by the very racism he had fought. But it isn’t true.
An ambulance took Drew to Alamance County General Hospital, where he received emergency care including plasma. Eyewitness testimony from Drew’s companions in the car at the time of the accident, along with hospital staff, confirmed that he was treated immediately. The hospital did segregate Black and white patients into different areas, which was standard in the Jim Crow South, but it was not a whites-only institution and did not refuse him care. Drew’s injuries from the accident were simply too severe to survive.
The myth persists in part because it captures something emotionally true about the era Drew lived in, even if the specific details are wrong. The real story of his life, building systems that saved countless lives while being told his own blood was somehow different, needs no embellishment.