In Outlook magazine’s Fall 1977 issue, Black surgeon Julian Mosley, MD, reflects on dealing with prejudice throughout his career: “I’ve learned that certain types of people aren’t worth arguing with. However, it does hurt when good friends who are intelligent make inadvertent remarks which demonstrate that deep down they have an undercoating of ingrained prejudice […]
Robert Lee, PhD, becomes the assistant dean for minority student affairs at the School of Medicine and remains in this job until 1992. Robert Lee oral history audio recording available via Bernard Becker Medical Library Archives » Image: Robert Lee, PhD, speaks with four recently accepted medical students, 1988.
Starting this year, the School of Medicine exceeds the national average in its proportion of Black medical students. Image: Washington University medical students, circa 1970
William L. Allen Jr., MD, is the first Black member of the Department of Radiology. Two years later, the American College of Radiology awards him its gold medal, its highest honor.
Aubrey R. Morrison, MD, becomes the school’s first Black intern, and later the first Black chief resident in internal medicine. In 1987, he is named the school’s first Black full professor. The Washington University Medical Center Alumni Association honors him with its Faculty Achievement Award in 2016. In a 2021 special article for the Journal […]
The Student Committee on Minority Student Admissions at the School of Medicine, including Julian Mosley and Karen Scruggs, makes recommendations to the Executive Faculty on ways to improve the recruiting and retention of underrepresented minorities.
The third, fourth and fifth Black medical students enter the School of Medicine. Patrick Obaiya transfers, Julian Mosley graduates in 1972 and Karen Scruggs graduates in 1973. “Statistics show that medical graduates tend to practice in the area in which they go to school and train. … I wanted to practice here because one of […]
James L. Sweatt III, MD, is the first Black person to graduate from the School of Medicine. He becomes a thoracic surgeon. In the December 2015 issue of Washington Magazine, Sweatt reflects on the admissions process: “I had the impression for years that it was routine for all the professors of the departments in the […]
On one Christmas Eve, a group of medical students, fed up with segregation at Barnes Hospital, move beds around so that one ward “was like piano keys: Black, white, Black, white,” recalled Gerald Medoff, MD.
Carl A. Moyer, MD, head of Washington University Surgery, gives faculty status or Barnes Hospital admitting privileges to Black Homer G. Phillips surgeons Frank Richards, MD, William Sinkler, MD, and others. “Dr. Moyer was a terrific guy, very interested in Homer Phillips. The only way I got into the St. Louis Surgical Society was that […]