BOSTON — Growing up in Memphis during the segregation era, Augustus White III knew about those certain places that were off-limits to him as a Black man — restrooms, diners and schools.
He just didn’t pay racial barriers much mind.
The son of a doctor and teacher became the first African-American to graduate from Stanford Medical School, the first African-American resident and surgery professor at Yale and later the first Black department head at Harvard’s teaching hospitals.
Now 74 and one of the nation’s leading orthopedic surgeons, White is releasing a memoir on his life. The book, Seeing Patients: Unconscious Bias in Health Care, is also a call for more diversity in the medical field and the end to health care disparities, something the Harvard professor calls “the last frontier of racial prejudice.”
White says the book, scheduled for release this month, has been a lifelong project that began when he served in the Army as a surgeon during the Vietnam War. “I kept a journal and saw a lot of horrible things. Over time, that changed me,” says White, who considered calling the book A Black Surgeon in Vietnam.
Among horrors he remembers was treating servicemen—Black, White and Latino—who had body parts blown off. “Pain is an equalizer, and, of course, the greatest equalizer of all is death, of which I saw plenty,” White writes. “Death is the equal opportunity employer.”
He left the Army a strong opponent of the war. Returning to civilian life, White says he soon became passionate about increasing ethnic diversity in the medical profession and fighting disparities in health care. It’s something he reminds colleagues whenever he speaks and attends medical conferences.
