Dr. Charles Richard Drew.

Betsy Graves Reyneau was born in Battle Creek, Ml, and raised in Detroit. Her grandfather was chief justice of the Michigan supreme court. She studied painting at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and with Frank Duveneck in Cincinnati. Following additional study in Paris and Rome, she returned to Detroit as a portrait painter. This conventional early life gives no clue to the profound effect this young artist’s later work would have on many Americans. In 1927, Reyneau moved to Europe. Twelve years later, not willing to accept fascism, she returned to the United States. However, the racial segregation she encountered on her return represented to Reyneau a fascism equal to that she had tried to escape. Reyneau decided to address segregation. She would paint portraits of distinguished Afro-Americans and thus make Afro-Amencans visible to the entire world. Her first subject, Dr. George Washington Carver, was displayed at the Tuskegee Institute only 3 months before his death. Looking at his portrait, Carver remarked “You paint the souls of people.” Reyneau learned that there were no portraits of Afro-Americans in any national collection. She persuaded the Smithsonian Institute to accept Dr. Carver’s portrait. Carver’s portrait proved to be the first of a collection of works titled “Portraits of Outstanding Americans of Negro Origin” that was sponsored by the Harmon Foundation. This collection, which was first exhibited at the Smithsonian institute in 1944, was subsequently shown at more than 25 major museums throughout the United States. The exhibition had a profound effect on viewers. Among the prominent Afro-Americans displayed in the exhibit were Paul Robeson, Marion Anderson, Mary McLeod Bethone, William DuBois, and Dr. Charles Richard Drew. Charles Drew was born in Washington, DC, in 1904. After attending Amherst College on an athletic scholarship and teaching for 2 years, he entered McGill University School of Medicine in 1928. Following a residency in surgery at Howard University, Drew received a fellowship in surgery at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. In 1940, Dr. Drew was awarded a doctor of science in medicine for his dissertation on banked blood. He was the first Afro-American to receive this degree. Drew returned to the surgical faculty at Howard. Because of his expertise in preserving and storing blood, Drew was asked by the English to organize their blood transfusion service. He was soon also recruited to direct the blood bank program of the American Red Cross. His efforts were thus responsible for saving thousands of lives during World War II. in 1941 , the Red Cross ordered non-Caucasian blood to be stored separately from Caucasian blood. Drew resigned his Red Cross post and returned to Howard as professor and chairman of the Department of Surgery, a position he retained until his death in a car accident in 1950. Drew was called the dean of black surgeons because he had trained more than half the practicing Afro-American surgeons at the time of his death in 1950. Drew was also an apostle for better health care in the Afro-American community. In Drew’s words, “the enjoyment of the highest obtainable standards of health is one of the fun-