March 2024 - Would You Take My Blood?
Remembering an ugly racist comment led blues singer Shemekia Copeland to write, "Would You Take My Blood?" When sitting in a hospital with her father Johnny Copeland, who suffered from a heart defect, she overheard a conversation. A doctor told a white patient that a heart had become available for transplant. The patient insisted that he would only take the heart from a person “of Caucasian descent.”
This led to a powerful blues tune set to these words: “You made it clear a thousand times, that you think I'm not your kind. But if your life was fading fast, your next breath was your last, no place left for you to go, here's what I would like to know. Would you take my blood? Would you take my blood? Or would you rather die than share your life with mine?”
This question was alive over eighty years ago when blood began spilling in World War II. Appeals for blood donations led Detroit’s Sylvia Tucker to the Red Cross. She was shocked when a supervisor turned her away because of the color of her skin. Without a scientific basis, America would not take the blood from Black people. Ironically, it would not even take blood from Dr. Charles Drew, the African American director of the Red Cross’s blood program from 1941-1942.
Though the Red Cross began accepting blood from Black people in 1942, it did so only on a segregated basis. Blood from someone of one race would not be given to someone of another race. Major civil rights organizations such as the NAACP and CORE criticized this policy. Today, the Red Cross frames this “regrettable decision” as the result of “accommodating cultural norms of the time.” While continuing to serve America, Drew protested by resigning his directorship.
Black newspapers featured front-page stories and blistering editorials. As America fought fascism overseas, the Cleveland Call and Post highlighted domestic hypocrisy through rhyme: “The cross of Red, that burned so bright in fire, storm and flood, Is now the crooked Nazi sign that spurns a Negro blood!” An Ohio branch of the Communist Party condemned the policy as “Barbarian Hitlerism.” Unions, religious groups, and scientific organizations joined the protests. While Black Americans patriotically served in the military and bought war bonds, many protested by refusing to donate blood.
This must have pained Dr. Charles Drew who dedicated himself to increasing our nation’s blood supply. He established standard procedures for blood collection and plasma processing, created mobile blood donation stations, later called "bloodmobiles," and trained a generation of Black physicians at Howard University. He won multiple awards and honorary degrees and was elected to the International College of Surgeons in 1946. Drew displayed the grace typical of many Black patriots who continued to serve a country that spurned them.
The Red Cross ended blood segregation in 1950, the year Drew died. Some southern states, such as Louisiana and Arkansas, did not end its blood discrimination until the 1960s. This was part of the “high-walled prison of the ‘Negro problem’” that Drew wrote about in a letter to a Texas school teacher. He encouraged students to achieve despite the roadblocks of racism, so that you can “knock down at least one or two bricks of that wall” until “part of the wall crumbles.”
Such spirit flows through the voice of Shemekia Copeland. She knocks down a brick at a time through music. Recently, on PBS, she explained, “I always say one person at a time. I don’t need to change the whole world. Just one person at a time.” Copeland displays both realism and optimism in the final verse of "Will You Take My Blood?" “No one knows till it’s our turn. We all share a sad history. But I'll take a chance on you, If you take a chance on me. Would you take my blood?”
Further Action:
1) Study, model, and improve on the admission of racism by the Red Cross. Its article of July 25, 2023, “The Color of Blood,” offers insight into how to acknowledge harm done, credit those harmed for educating us about the harm, and stop similar harm due to racism as occurred during the Covid pandemic.
2) Appreciate that while blood segregation is unscientific and hurtful, the answer is not to be “color blind.” First, while the race of blood donors and recipients typically do not matter, some ethnic groups have blood characteristics that complicate blood compatibility. For example, people with sickle cell disease, which occurs primarily in the Black population, must be matched very closely. The Red Cross explains that “these patients are more likely to find a compatible blood match from a blood donor of the same race or ethnicity.” Second, such complications make it important to focus on Black community blood drives, something the Red Cross encourages.
3) Fight racism in medicine by educating children in both history and science. During WW II, students at New York’s PS 43 compared the blood of white and black people and found no differences due to race, adding pressure on authorities to end blood segregation. Geraldyne Ghess, a Cleveland high school student published a poem in a black. It read: "Had I wealth, I’d burn it all; Not one cent for the Red Cross call. Our money is good … our blood is bad. But, still that shouldn’t make us mad. Are they afraid they’ll all turn black? Is that why our blood they lack? Their skins are white as snow … it’s well. Their souls are tarnished, black as hell."
4) Listen to Shemekia Copeland’s 2020 album Uncivil War, on which you can find, "Will You Take My Blood?" It contains other social justice lessons about strong women, gun-violence, economic inequality, and loving whomever you want. The lessons are easy to hear and understand, according to Carlo Rotella of the Washington Post. He writes, “The words matter to her more than any other element of a song, and she wants to make sure you hear them all.” Let’s learn from Copeland. Begin with this story on NPR.