Contact:
Regina Boone
Development and Public Relations
919-546-8269
For Immediate Release

History of the Leonard School of Medicine
"Educating African-American Physicians in Raleigh, NC: 
The Leonard Medical School of Shaw University, 1882-1918" 

Free Lecture by Dr. Todd Savitt 
Saturday, February 21 at 2:00 p.m. 
Raleigh City Museum 
220 Fayetteville Street Mall, Downtown Raleigh 

On Saturday, February 21 at 2:00 p.m. the Raleigh City Museum will host a slide lecture by Dr. Todd Savitt, professor of Medical Humanities at East Carolina University School of Medicine, entitled “Educating African-American Physicians in Raleigh, NC: Leonard Medical School of Shaw University, 1882-1918." The program is free and open to the general public and will be held at the Museum, located in the historic Briggs Building, 220 Fayetteville Street Mall in downtown Raleigh. This event has been made possible through a grant from the North Carolina Humanities Council. 

Leonard Medical School in Raleigh was one of fourteen medical schools founded in the United States between 1868 and 1900 dedicated to the education of African-Americans. Over its 36-year history, Leonard graduated almost 400 physicians. Founded with great promise in 1882, Leonard, like its sister black medical schools, struggled to survive financially as it tried to keep up with changes in medical education and medical science during the late nineteenth century. Race issues added an extra burden. Only two African-American medical schools, Meharry University and Howard University, survived after 1923. This slide talk will discuss Leonard’s founding, the life of its students, the school’s successes and stresses, and its unhappy closing in 1918. 

Todd Savitt is currently a Professor of Medical Humanities at East Carolina University School of Medicine, where he teaches social and ethnical issues in medicine and coordinates the ECU Medical School’s Readers’ Theater. He is a graduate of Colgate University (A.B., History) and the University of Virginia (M.A., Ph.D., American History). Dr. Savitt also received post-doctoral training at Duke University in the History of Medicine and the History of Science. Dr. Savitt has been active in the American Association for the History of Medicine since 1981 and presently holds the office of Secretary-Treasurer. A member of the North Carolina Humanities Council from 1986-1991, he now serves as a grants panelist and reviewer for the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Institutes of Health. 

For more information on this event, please contact Ken Peters, Coordinator of Education & Outreach, at 832-3775 ext. 11 or visit www.raleighcitymuseum.org.