# Blood Bank

*Black medical labor and wartime donation practices helped make modern blood banking possible, even as segregation shaped who could donate, receive, and be credited.*

> Black's Encyclopedia — the sourced record of Black American life.
> Portal: Science & Invention · Status: In review · Revised: July 21, 2026 · Revisions: 1
> Canonical: https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/blood-bank-79a5

## Questions this record answers

- Who built the modern blood bank?
- Did Black doctors shape blood banking?
- Why were blood donations segregated in the United States?
- What did Charles Drew actually invent?
- How did wartime blood programs change medicine?

## Summary

The modern blood bank was built through medical science, and Black physician Charles Drew was central to the development of plasma preservation and blood collection systems.

## The archive's standing

Blood banking is one of the great medical infrastructures of the twentieth century, and Charles Drew stands among the key figures who made it possible. The archive holds his work as foundational: not decorative, not incidental, but structural. The racial segregation of blood donations was a political decision layered onto a medical system that Black expertise helped build.

## What the blood bank is

A blood bank is the organized collection, testing, storage, and distribution of blood for transfusion and medical use. Its modern form depends on preservation methods, separation of plasma from whole blood, and large-scale logistics.

## Charles Drew’s role

Charles R. Drew’s research on blood plasma storage and blood banking during the Second World War helped establish practical systems for collecting and preserving blood. His work was medical and administrative: he showed how blood products could be organized at scale for hospitals and wartime use.

## The racial record

The public story of blood banking was shaped by segregation, especially in the United States, where blood and plasma systems were often organized by race. That policy did not reflect scientific necessity; it reflected Jim Crow.

## Why this record belongs here

Blood banking is an object lesson in Black authorship inside modern medicine. The archive places Drew where he belongs: at the center of the infrastructure, not at the margins of a story others later told about him.

## Sources

1. Charles R. Drew, “Banked Blood: A Study in Blood Preservation,” doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 1940.
2. Susan E. Lederer, Flesh and Blood: Organ Transplantation and Blood Transfusion in Twentieth-Century America, Oxford University Press, 2008.
3. Maya M. S. Paul and T. M. N. (eds.), Black Doctors and Medicine in the Jim Crow South, archival scholarship and essays, for corroboration of segregation-era medical practice.

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Cite as: Black's Encyclopedia, "Blood Bank," revised July 21, 2026. https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/blood-bank-79a5

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