# Blood Bank

*Black scientists and physicians built blood banking as a modern medical system, while segregation distorted who received credit and who could safely receive blood.*

> Black's Encyclopedia — the sourced record of Black American life.
> Portal: Science & Invention · Status: In review · Revised: July 22, 2026 · Revisions: 1
> Canonical: https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/blood-bank-6341

## Questions this record answers

- Who really invented the blood bank?
- Did Black physicians shape modern blood banking?
- Why were blood banks segregated?
- What did Charles Drew actually do?

## Summary

The modern blood bank was built through Black scientific work, especially the research and organizational labor associated with Charles Richard Drew and the wartime plasma program. The official record often narrows that story to a few names, but the broader Black medical record shows a deeper authorship in the making of blood preservation and transfusion systems.

## The archive's standing

Blood banking is one of the great medical infrastructure achievements of the twentieth century. It turned blood from an emergency fluid into a managed, preservable, distributable resource, and Black physicians and scientists stand inside that transformation as builders, not footnotes. The archive refuses to let segregation or simplified attribution shrink that achievement.

## What was built

Blood banking made it possible to collect, test, store, and distribute blood and plasma at scale. That changed trauma care, surgery, and wartime medicine, and it required scientific methods, logistics, and institutional design.

## Black authorship in the system

Charles Drew’s work on plasma preservation and large-scale blood collection is central to the record of blood banking. Black medical institutions and Black medical professionals also helped develop and explain the practical world in which transfusion medicine became usable, especially in settings where access and trust were shaped by racial exclusion.

## Segregation as a distortion of the record

The same period that formalized blood banking also segregated blood and often separated the story of scientific labor from the people who performed it. That means the archival problem is not only technical but political: the system preserved bodies while often misassigning credit.

## Why the archive files this here

Blood banking belongs in the record of Black invention because Black expertise helped make the system work. The historical question is not whether Black people belonged to the story, but why the dominant telling still makes that belonging harder to see.

## Sources

1. Charles R. Drew, 'Banked Blood: A Study in Blood Preservation,' Columbia University doctoral dissertation, 1940; Columbia University Archives.
2. Spencer R. Weart and others, contemporary medical and wartime blood-bank literature; National Library of Medicine historical collections on blood banking and plasma preservation.

## Related records

- https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/charles-drew
- https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/united-states-blood-plasma-banking
- https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/blood-transfusion-and-blood-plasma-preservation
- https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/american-blood-plasma-banking
- https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/daniel-hale-williams

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Cite as: Black's Encyclopedia, "Blood Bank," revised July 22, 2026. https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/blood-bank-6341

Text under the Black's Record License: cite the record, keep attribution attached, cite the revision date.