One Blood: The Death and Resurrection of Charles R. Drew

by Spencie Love

One Blood traces 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 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 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

Genres: History

400 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1996

Reviews

[Hans Ostrom]

A wonderful, exacting piece of history. Drew is famous for deciding a way to store large quantities of blood plasma and helped England develop a blood bank in 1941. The book debunks one mythic aspect of Drew's untimely death, and a separate section shows why the myth was so believable. The book also explore America's backward, racist view of blood, one that made it illegal for Blacks to give blood to "white" blood banks. Some Southern states kept that policy through the 1960s. Love narrates the biographies\history gracefully.

[Jess Bergeman]

An interesting take on the history surrounding the death and contributing factors of Dr Drew It wasn’t quite what I had expected but it was still very well researched and well done.