Yale Bulletin and Calendar

March 7, 2003|Volume 31, Number 21|Two-Week Issue

Scholarship recognizes vital
role of diversity in education

The Creed/Patton/Steele Scholarship has been endowed by Yale to recognize the importance of diversity in graduate and professional education, and to honor the achievements of Dr. Courtlandt Van Rensselaer Creed, the first African American to graduate from the Yale School of Medicine.

The scholarship, the first of its kind created by alumni and friends of the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health (EPH), was initiated with gifts by alumnus Robert E. Steele (' 71 M.P.H., '75 Ph.D.) and supported by the work of an alumni-organized committee. The scholarship also honors EPH professor Curtis L. Patton, who has devoted much of his Yale career to leading minority initiatives.

"When I was a student here in 1969 through 1971, it was still at a time when the government was providing educational funding," says Steele. "I was fortunate to leave debt free. This scholarship is a way for me to make a contribution to the profession. It is very important to establish a tradition of giving back."

The scholarship will be awarded each year to an outstanding minority student in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the School of Medicine. The scholarship will also serve as a recruiting device.

"The amount of scholarship assistance for Master of Public Health (M.P.H.) students at Yale affects the school's ability to recruit students to the program and also affects the career choices students make when they graduate," says Elaine Anderson, director of alumni and community affairs at EPH. "It is an incentive for students who would otherwise not have the means to study public health at Yale."

"Minorities have been terribly underrepresented both at the faculty and student level," says Patton, professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health and director of international health. "The Yale faculty, in addition to the alumni, were extremely supportive. It was a major effort to raise $100,000 plus to make this a permanent fund for the university. This is the first time that the board of the public health alumni association itself put up its own money to ensure that this scholarship reached the $100,000 mark."

Other related initiatives include creating tuition-free Public Health Opportunity scholarships; developing a new summer academic enrichment program for undergraduate and high school students funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; and adopting a statement of principle by the faculty to make cultural diversity a priority.

Creed's attendance at Yale came on the heels of the Connecticut Assembly's decision to remove references to race in the state's constitution in 1846. In 1854, the climate in the state and at Yale and its medical institution was favorable when he became the first African American to officially register and study at Yale.

Twenty years earlier, a Connecticut law prohibiting out-of-state African Americans from attending any Connecticut school without permission from the town kept James W.C. Pennington of New York from officially enrolling in Yale's Divinity School. He was allowed to attend classes but left without a degree. He went on to receive international praise as a scholar and to accept an honorary doctorate from the University of Heidelberg.

As a lifelong New Haven resident, Creed was not subject to the law that prevented Pennington from enrolling at Yale. He was the son of John Creed, a steward at Yale, and Vashti Duplex Creed, the first African-American teacher in New Haven. His parents had named him for Courtlandt Van Rensselaer, a friend and classmate of Yale President Dwight Woolsey, Dean Charles Hooker and Reverend Leonard Bacon, a member of the Yale Corporation.

After completing three years of study and researching and writing a thesis, Creed took his oral examinations before representatives of the Connecticut Medical Society, the faculty of the Yale medical school and President Woolsey. On January 15-16, 1857, he received the M.D. with 10 other young men. His thesis, "On the Blood," dealt with the chemistry and physiology of blood in health and sickness.

After graduation, Creed opened an office on Chapel Street in New Haven and developed a prosperous practice. According to Patton, at the outbreak of the Civil War, Creed wrote to the governor of Connecticut requesting a commission to serve as a surgeon in the state militia, but was refused because of his race. As the war progressed, the need for African Americans to further the Union cause became clear and the governor issued a call to arms to African American men in 1863. Creed wrote to the governor again, this time to thank him, declaring, "On every side we behold colored sons rallying to the sound of Liberty and Union." He enlisted in 1864 and was appointed acting surgeon of the 30th Connecticut Volunteers, a company of African Americans.

After the war, Creed returned to his New Haven practice. Over the years, he was featured in New York Times articles, including one on the shooting of President Garfield. Doctors did not want to operate on the wounded President until they could locate the bullet. Creed was on the list of several prominent physicians that The White House contacted for suggestions on how to find the bullet. President Garfield died of blood poisoning in 1881 before the bullet could be found.

Another New York Times article highlighted Creed's forensic expertise in helping to solve the murder of a young New Haven woman who had been poisoned with arsenic. Two local boys were eventually arrested for the crime. "Arsenic Under the Elms: Murder in Victorian New Haven," a recent novel by Virginia McConnell, is based on those events.

After a very challenging life and career, Creed died in New Haven on Aug. 8, 1900, at age 65.

Following in Creed's footsteps, Edward A. Bouchet (B.A., 1874, Ph.D., 1876) was the first African American undergraduate at Yale College and the first to earn a Ph.D. from an American university -- the sixth Ph.D. ever earned in the nation.

"While remaining a part of the powerful black culture of learning and service they brought with them, African American students tolerated peculiar arrangements at Yale and other institutions in the 19th century," says Patton. "They refined their talents, finished courses of study on time, and on occasion they departed with degrees along with a few abiding bonds and great memories. With these in their minds and in their hearts, they moved on with wonder and grace to witness new possibilities for themselves, their communities and their nation."

-- By Karen Peart

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