Jan. 24, 1948 - As the war has ended, countless soldiers are returning home in hopes of starting their lives over again. Among them are the Negro troops who fought to defend the nation. These returning African-Americans are finding limited opportunity due to discrimination. It is this discrimination that is blocking nearly all African-Americans and minority groups from entering medical colleges and becoming doctors in this field.
Of the major medical colleges in the nation, at 4% Yale maintains the highest percentage of black students. Of the 78 approved medical colleges, 26 are closed to African-Americans; one-third of these medical colleges are in the Deep South. In the United States, only Howard University and Meharry University completely accept African-American students. This is the situation that many African-American students face upon applying for a medical degree.
In the case of most African-American students, getting accepted to a college is difficult. "They wouldnÕt accept me, even though I served[as a Medic]," says one such applicant, Samuel Daveson, a medic attached to the 827th Tank Destroyer Battalion. When applying at the University of Illinois Medical School (which is composed of 1.5% African American students), Mr. Daveson was appalled by the quota system of the application board. "They asked me about my family and where I lived, but didnÕt care about my skills."
The tendency of application boards to base appointment decisions on nontechnical considerations is not an uncommon thing. A study in Providence, in 1940, indicated that social background and personality were major considerations of the application boards.
An interviewed hospital administrator stated, "In the early days, we had competitive examinations but we had to discontinue those." Others interviewed however, said that nontechnical considerations were occasionally used, but racial discrimination was not commonplace in these applications.
For those who are not accepted by the American medical schools, there are few options. For others, they look overseas to the European medical schools. This option became severely limited after the war, when the National Board of Medical Examiners decided that it would not admit graduates of foreign medical schools.
Though African-Americans are perceived by many as ill-educated on average, and lacking initiative, African-Americans are pushing to gain admittance into the major medical colleges. Their movement is making ground. On November 24, 1947, the Southern Medical Association "dropped its ban on African-American physicians in its scientific sessions." Thus, the color line in medicine is gradually being broken.