Perspectives from the historic African American medical institutions

The historically African American medical schools have been at the center o f medical education for African American physicians in the United States si nce the Howard University College of Medicine opened in 1868. Although ther e were more than a dozen African American medical schools established durin g the next few decades, as propriety or church affiliated schools, only two survived the Flexner Report in 1910. Howard University (1868) and Meharry (1876) survived and trained generations of African Americans. These two sch ools educated approximately 85% of all African American physicians whereas the majority medical schools educated 15% for more than half of the twentie th century. As the result of a series of lawsuits filed by the National Ass ociation for the Advancement of Colored People, civil rights legislation an d affirmative action programs, the numbers of the schools that now admitted African Americans increased and the total numbers of African American medi cal students increased when discrimination was prohibited in 1966. The perc entage of African American medical students attending predominantly white i nstitutions increased by 25% in 1948, by 47% in 1968, by 61% in 1983 and to 84% in 1990. Two additional predominantly African American medical schools were established: the Charles R. Drew Medical School, Los Angeles (affilia ted with the University of California, Los Angeles) in 1966, and Morehouse Medical School, Atlanta, which admitted its first class in 1978. Recent cou rt decisions prohibiting schools from considering race as factor in admissi on and the end of affirmative action programs have resulted in a drop in to tal minority enrollment. The historically African American medical schools, that admitted approximately 15% of the African American medical students d uring the era of affirmative action programs, will see this percentage decr ease as the majority institutions admit fewer African American medical stud ents and minority students. In the United States this trend already has bee n observed in admission data and graduation data for 1996 and 1997.