Speaker discusses Brown v. Board - Associate Dean of Hopkins School of Medicine recalls Civil Rights Movement

Dr. Levi Watkins spoke Tuesday night to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision, ending institutionalized segregation by decring that "separate but equal" unconstitutionally divided public schools on the basis of race. Watkins' speech covered his experiences in the civil rights movement, modern racism, and national political trends. Watkins is the Associate Dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, a Full Professor of Cardiac Surgery, as well as a cardiac surgeon.

"Our history is our heritage and survival," Watkins said to begin his speech. He recounted that "white schools were unavailable in our democratic Christian nation until 1954."

Watkins grew up in Montgomery Alabama during the height of the civil rights movement during the 1960s. He then went on to attend Tennessee State University where his love for political activism was nourished.

In 1966 he entered the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and became the first African-American ever to attend and graduate the institution.

"Feces was thrown in my face from the fourth floor of a dormitory," Watkins said, relating his struggles while at Vanderbilt.

"It only cemented my resolve and made me want to be the best doctor I could be." His worst experience at Vanderbilt came, he said, when students at the school "expressed joy at Martin Luther King Jr.'s assasination." He said that students wrote, "'we finally got the coon' on a picture of King I had on my dormitory door."

In 1970 he went to Johns Hopkins as a surgical intern and in 1978 became the first black chief resident in cardiac surgery. After joining the Division of Cardiac Surgery at Johns Hopkins he performed the world' first human implantation of automatic implantable defibrillator in 1980. The treatment has saved over 100,000 people's lives.

Despite the strides that Watkins has made in his own life, he says that there are still stunning healthcare disparities for African-Americans that are attributable to racism.

He says that "120,000 African-American die unnecessarily each year" because they are not diagnosed and treated properly. African-Americans, Watkins said, "are 10 percent less likely to be diagnosed and 50 percent less likely to be operated on for heart disease.

In 1979 Dr.Watkins joined the admission committee at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in order to help promote racial equality within the school. Over a four year period he helped to increase the minority representation by over 400 percent.

Watkins also spoke about what he described as a conservatism he saw sweeping the nation and the impact that George W. Bush has had over the last three years. He said he believes that Bush has "vilified affirmative action" and is "uninformed about black history and war." Watkins said that over recent years there has been an "assault on education and a bankruptcy of funds for a stupid war."

Personally, Watkins said that he came full circle in his life when a little over a year ago Vanderbilt established a Professorship and Associate Deanship in his name. He attributed his success to the overriding themes in African American "history of speaking out, activism, faith and education."