The First Black Doctor at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
In 1962, St. Jude was the 1st fully integrated hospital in the South
Issue #121 Fun Friday, August 26, 2022
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You have to be a member of the older Boomer generation like me to remember Danny Thomas (1912-1991), a successful entertainer during the burlesque and post-WWII years, who then had one of the longest-running TV shows, “Make Room for Daddy,” in the 1950s and early 1960s. Danny’s daughter, Marlo Thomas, starred in her own successful TV show, “That Girl,” in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Danny Thomas was the son of Roman Catholic Lebanese immigrants and was born in Michigan and raised in Ohio. When Danny was what he called a “starving actor,” he made a vow that if he ever became successful, he would open a shrine dedicated to St. Jude Thaddeus, the patron saint of hopeless causes.
In 1962, Danny Thomas fulfilled his pledge and opened the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. It was the first fully integrated hospital in the South at the time. St. Jude is now the foremost hospital in the world focused on treating patients with pediatric cancer and other childhood diseases and welcomes children of all races. The St. Jude Foundation pays the expenses of families whose children are patients at St. Jude.
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Dr. Rudolph E. Jackson, Hematology Pioneer
Dr. Rudolph Jackson, one of the first Black doctors at St. Jude, was a groundbreaking figure in the treatment of sickle cell, childhood cancer, solid tumors, and other life-threatening diseases. A section of St. Jude Hospital is named after Dr. Jackson.
While he was at St. Jude, Dr. Jackson built the sickle cell program to such a stature that in the early 1970s the National Institute of Health hired him to head the federal government’s efforts to fight the disease.
In his four years at St. Jude, Dr. Jackson witnessed and took part in new therapies that produced major advances in the battle against childhood cancer. By the time he began working at St. Jude in 1968, the hospital was beginning to succeed in treating acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), a type of blood cancer. Since opening in 1962, St. Jude has increased the survival rates for ALL from 4% to 94%.
As part of his contributions at St. Jude, Dr. Jackson worked to develop a program there that enrolled thousands of local infants and mothers to receive nutritional assistance, medicine, and diapers. The program served as a prototype for what would become the federal Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).
He worked with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) with the A.I.D.S. Research Consortium and traveled the world teaching and practicing international medicine with doctors in Africa and Asia.
Dr. Rudolph Jackson was born in 1921 in Richmond, Virginia. He attended Morehouse College and Meharry Medical College in the 1950s and 1960s and was drafted into the U.S. Navy. After his honorable military discharge, Dr. Jackson was personally chosen by Danny Thomas to be the head of the cancer and sickle cell programs at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. He died in Richmond, Virginia, in August 2021 at age 86.
Do you remember Danny and Marlo Thomas? Have you ever heard of Dr. Rudolph Jackson? Let us know in the comments!
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