One Blood

by Love, Spencie

• ISBN13: 9780807846827
• ISBN10: 0807846821
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780807863060
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-11-01
• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr
• More Book Details
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Summary

One Bloodtraces both the life of the famous black surgeon and blood plasma pioneer Dr. Charles Drew and the well-known legend about his death. On April 1, 1950, Drew died after an auto accident in rural North Carolina. Within hours, rumors spread: the man who helped create the first American Red Cross blood bank had bled to death because a whites-only hospital refused to treat him. Drew was in fact treated in the emergency room of the small, segregated Alamance General Hospital. Two white surgeons worked hard to save him, but he died after about an hour. In her compelling chronicle of Drew's life and death, Spencie Love shows that in a generic sense, the Drew legend is true: throughout the segregated era, African Americans were turned away at hospital doors, either because the hospitals were whites-only or because the 'black beds' were full. Love describes the fate of a young black World War II veteran who died after being turned away from Duke Hospital following an auto accident that occurred in the same year and the same county as Drew's. African Americans are shown to have figuratively 'bled to death' at white hands from the time they were first brought to this country as slaves. By preserving their own stories, Love says, they have proven the enduring value of oral history. General Interest/Race Relations

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Foreword	xvii
John Hope Franklin
Introduction: A Tragedy Compounded by a Myth	1	(12)
PART ONE: Death and Resurrection
Charlie Drew Is Dead	13	(18)
They Wouldn't Treat Him	31	(25)
That Black Man Who Bled to Death	56	(41)
PART TWO: The Life and Times of Charles R. Drew
Bright New Steel	97	(42)
The Bloods of Different Races	139	(22)
The Group as a Whole	161	(22)
Dark Myths and Wretched Superstitions	183	(34)
PART THREE: The Death of an Invisible Man
Wasn't He Riding with Dr. Drew?	217	(42)
Conclusion: A Dark Stone of Enlightenment	259	(10)
Notes	269	(64)
Bibliography	333	(28)
Index	361