Physician. Medical pioneer. Founder and President Emeritus of the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America. Distinguished Professor and Dean Emeritus of Wayne State University School of Medicine. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1942 and Meharry Medical College in 1945. Following a short general medicine practice in Lackawana, New York, he served as a captain in the United States Army for two years before completing a year of advanced study in pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Medicine. He completed a two year residency in pediatrics at the Children's Hospital in Buffalo, New York before coming to Detroit, Michigan under a pediatric hematology fellowship at the Children's Hospital of Michigan. In 1957, he joined the faculty of Wayne State University School of Medicine and was subsequently appointed chief of pediatrics at the Detroit Receiving Hospital, making him the first African American to head a hospital department in Michigan. Observing that there was a severe shortage of minority physicians serving in urban communities, he established in 1969 the first post baccalaureate enrichment program for disadvantaged and minority students who applied but were not accepted into a medical school. As a pioneer in medical education, his program at Wayne State University became the model by which minority students would be recruited to serve in underrepresented areas, and has been replicated at medical schools across the country. He is also widely regarded in the medical community as a trailblazer for his work in sickle cell anemia screening. In 1971 he formed the Sickle Cell Detection and Information Center, a community program which developed educational tools for teaching children and families about sickle cell disease. He also created the National Association for Sickle Cell Disease (now known as the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America) in 1971, with over 100 chapters across America, and is credited with the pivotal work in toxicology that developed the standard of care for sickle cell patients to this day. He is also credited with paving the way for routine newborn screening for sickle cell anemia in Michigan and, subsequently, in the United States. He died of complications from multiple myeloma.

Bio by: Legacy