At the turn of the 20th century, there were seven medical schools focused on training and sending Black doctors into the various medical professions. In 1910, however, a report titled Medical Education in the United States and Canada was largely responsible for closing all but two of the historically Black institutions dedicated to developing Black doctors. Only Howard University’s College of Medicine in Washington, D.C., and Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, survived. (The photograph shows Andrea Hayes Dixon, Dean of the Howard University College of Medicine, in the center working with medical students at Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, D.C., in 2023.)
The report, commissioned by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and written by Abraham Flexner, changed medical school education in America dramatically, but Flexner’s views that Black doctors should only treat Black patients and be deferential to white doctors was seen by some as a structural implementation of systemic racism.
More than a century after the report, there are only a few medical colleges and schools with an emphasis on preparing Black students to become doctors.
More than 20,000 students graduate from U.S. medical colleges and schools and become doctors annually. The demographic breakdown of physicians in the United States is 56 percent white, 17 percent Asian, almost 6 percent Hispanic, and 5 percent Black or African American, according to a 2019 report by the Association of American Medical Colleges. Black people make up more than 13 percent of the U.S. population, and Hispanics make up about 19 percent.
While there was a 21 percent increase in the number of Black students entering medical school in 2021, according to the National Medical Association, the oldest and largest group supporting African American physicians and their patients, the number of African American doctors is small. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Predominantly Black Institutions aim to educate and train more physicians to serve people who look like them and people who want more diverse care options.
Morehouse School of Medicine and Howard University College of Medicine are connected to undergraduate institutions with strong premed programs. Founded in 1975, the Morehouse med school started as a medical education program at Morehouse College. In 1981 the school became an independent institution focused on medicine. The Howard University program started in 1868.
Meharry Medical College in Nashville was founded as a dentistry school 11 years after the Civil War. It evolved into a college with graduate research, M.S., Ph.D., and M.D. programs.
Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science was founded in California in 1966 and, as such, does not qualify as an HBCU. (The term HBCU refers to schools founded prior to 1964 to serve Black students.) It is, however, a Historically Black Graduate Institution, a Minority Serving Institution, and a member of the Hispanic-Serving Health Professions Schools. It was created after the 1965 Watts Riots in Los Angeles to address the lack of medical education available for California’s Black residents. In 1981 Drew had a joint medical program with the University of California Los Angeles. In 2022 Drew announced plans to become an independent medical school.
In 2023 Xavier University of Louisiana, an HBCU in New Orleans with a college of pharmacy, and Ochsner Health announced plans to launch a joint college of medicine.