I spent an afternoon recently in the black history section of my university's library looking up accounts of the 1950 death of Dr. Charles R. Drew, the man responsible for developing blood banks. A persistent legend clings to the incident more than 40 years ago when Drew died from the injuries he suffered in an automobile accident.
Many reference books repeat the shocking but untrue story that Drew was refused lifesaving treatment at a Southern hospital simply because he was black. Here's how it appeared in William Loren Katz's 1967 book "Eyewitness: The Negro in American History":"On April 1, 1950, Dr. Drew was injured in an auto accident near Burlington, N.C. Although he was bleeding profusely, he was turned away from the nearest `white' hospital. By the time he was taken to another hospital, the scientist had bled to death."
A more dramatic account that sounds like an exaggeration of Katz's version, was in Philip T. Drotning's 1969 book, "Black Heroes in our Nation's History":
"With a brilliant career behind him and a brilliant future still ahead, Dr. Drew was injured in an automobile accident near Burlington, N.C. He was bleeding profusely when he was delivered to the nearest `white' hospital, and because he was black, the personnel there turned him away. Before he could be taken to another hospital, the great black scientist, desperately in need of the treatment that he had done so much to devise, bled to death."
The fact is that after the accident Drew and three other black doctors who were riding in the same car received timely professional treatment in the emergency room of Alamance County General Hospital in Burlington. No one knows how the story got started about the doctors being turned away because of their race.
But once in motion, the story has been hard to stop, probably because many older reference books that contain the story can still be found on library shelves. For example, the 1978 edition of "The International Library of Afro-American Life and History" says:
"With tragic irony, Dr. Drew's own death resulted when a `white' hospital refused to admit him for an emergency blood transfusion after he was injured in an automobile accident."
The 1981 "Encyclopedia of Black Americans" contains yet another variation: "The segregated hospital to which he was admitted did not have any blood plasma that might have saved his life."
The true irony of Drew's death was that a blood transfusion would not have helped him. Dr. John R. Ford, a passenger in the car, was interviewed by Scot Morris of Omni magazine, and he described Drew's condition like this, "He had a superior vena caval syndrome - blood was blocked getting back to his heart from his brain and upper extremities. To give him a transfusion would have killed him sooner."
Morris had included the apocryphal story about Drew's death in an Omni quiz; when he discovered the truth, he published the facts in his book "Omni Games."
Among others who have spread the legend, unaware of its falsity, Morris wrote, were Dick Gregory who told it in his monologues; Isaac Asimov, who included it in the first edition of his "Book of Facts"; Alan Alda, who played Hawkeye Pierce on "M*A*S*H" and told it on an episode of the television series; and musician Wynton Marsalis, who told the story in 1987 on a segment of the television series "57th Street."
I have been able to come up with one possible explanation for the story. When Drew established the first blood bank (in New York City in 1940), he could not donate blood to it because he was black. Based on that fact, someone may have incorrectly concluded that since Drew could not donate blood in 1940 he could not receive it in 1950, thus giving birth to an urban legend.
However the story got started, in 1989 members of the Society of Black Academic Surgeons gathered at the place where Drew was injured and tried again to debunk the story. An Associated Press report of their meeting quoted Dr. Charles Kernodle of Burlington, one of the doctors who treated Drew in 1950, who said, "We did all we could for him."
I became interested in the story of Charles Drew's death after a newspaper that carries this column printed the legendary version in March. After a reader pointed out the error, the editors explained that they had consulted an outdated reference book, one still used in their city's schools.
Too bad they didn't use the 1989 edition of "The Negro Almanac," which, like most current reference works of its kind says simply, "Dr. Drew was killed in an automobile crash."
This is not as tragic and ironic as the fictional story, but it's the truth.- "Curses! Broiled Again," Jan Harold Brunvand's fourth collection of urban legends, is now available in paperback from Norton. Send your questions and urban legends to him in care of the Deseret News.