“The Knick”‘s Medical Racism Issues Evoke Story of Rosenwald Fellow Dr. Charles Drew

The New York Times, and their writer Brent Staples are to be commended for shedding light on racism in health care. Discrimination in health care practice, against both practitioners and recipients, has been an undercurrent of overall racism in U.S. history. The new “Showtime” tv series “The Knick” features a controversially innovative New York City hospital at the turn of the 20th century, where an accomplished African American physician encounters prejudice and the hospital’s acerbic chief of surgery Dr. Thackery, portrayed by Clive Owen. Andre Holland plays the gifted Black surgeon, Dr. Algernon Edwards, who is assigned menial tasks, discreetly treats Black patients in the hospital’s basement, and lives in a flophouse in a rundown section of the city. Edwards’ fictional plight recalls the real life challenges faced by medical pioneer Dr. Charles Drew (1904-1950), whose development of blood plasma banks saved the lives of thousands, including Allied soldiers during World War Two. Drew’s daughter, former D.C. City Councilwoman Charlene Drew Jarvis, is interviewed in the film “The Rosenwald Schools”. Dr. Drew finished Howard University because of a Rosenwald Fellowship that allowed him to complete his studies. In the 1930’s Drew assumed a clandestine residency at Harlem’s Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, under the tutelage of a doctor far more supportive than “The Knick”‘s Thackery.