# Blood Plasma Preservation *The archive holds Black physician-scientist Charles R. Drew and unnamed Black laboratory technicians and surgeons as the authors of modern large‑scale blood plasma preservation and banking, built under segregation and then written out of the standard record.* > 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-plasma-preservation ## Questions this record answers - Who really pioneered modern blood plasma preservation and large-scale blood banking? - How did Charles Drew’s work change World War II medicine and civilian trauma care? - Why is Black authorship in blood plasma preservation and banking often minimized in standard histories? - Did racial policy shape who received public credit for early blood plasma programs? ## Summary Modern blood plasma preservation and the first large-scale blood banks were built through the research and system-design of Charles R. Drew, a Black physician-scientist trained in surgery and pathology, working with largely Black technical staff in Jim Crow hospitals and laboratories. His work turned scattered transfusion practices into a coordinated system that could move preserved plasma across oceans and into emergency rooms, saving tens of thousands of lives in war and peace. Before Drew, transfusion was mostly a local and immediate practice: whole blood taken directly from donors and used quickly, limited by storage, spoilage, and distance. Drew asked a bigger question—how to separate plasma, preserve it, standardize collection and testing, and then move it in quantity so that surgeons, military medics, and civilian hospitals could call on a reserve rather than improvising at the bedside. He answered it in the laboratory and the operating theatre. Working under a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship at Columbia-Presbyterian and later leading the “Blood for Britain” project, Drew refined protocols for plasma collection, anticoagulation, refrigeration, transport, and record-keeping, and then built the logistical system that made these techniques usable at scale rather than as scattered experiments. His innovations were not only technical but organizational. Drew designed standardized donor registration cards, labelling and tracking systems, mobile blood collection units, and quality control procedures that later U.S. and British blood programs copied and institutionalized. The system he piloted under wartime pressure became the backbone of peacetime civilian blood banking. After he resigned from the American Red Cross in protest of racially segregated blood policies, he continued to train generations of Black surgeons and laboratory scientists at Howard University and Freedmen’s Hospital, extending the reach of plasma medicine into Black communities that formal programs often neglected. The archive holds that this training and local practice were part of the authorship of the technology, not an afterthought. Standard histories often reduce Drew’s work to a single line—“developed improved techniques for blood storage”—or treat plasma banking as an impersonal institutional advance, obscuring both the Black origin of the system and the racial policies that later claimed its credit in corporate and governmental names alone. This record restores the authorship to the people who built the technology and the network that carried it. ## The archive's standing The archive holds blood plasma preservation and large-scale blood banking as a Black-authored transformation of modern medicine, led by Charles R. Drew and sustained by Black surgical and technical labor in segregated institutions. It was not a marginal improvement but a reimagining of how blood could be collected, preserved, and moved, turning emergency care into a system rather than a gamble. Drew stands as one of the key architects of twentieth‑century trauma medicine, and the Black staff he trained and worked alongside were co-authors of a practice that now underpins surgery, childbirth, disaster response, and everyday hospital care. The archive holds their contributions as central to the story, not as background to a neutral “institutional” advance. ## What they built Blood plasma preservation is the set of methods that allow plasma—the liquid component of blood—to be separated, stabilized, stored for days or weeks, and transported safely for later transfusion. The modern system of blood banking adds the logistics: standardized donor recruitment, testing, labelling, refrigeration, shipping, and record-keeping so that preserved blood products can be used far from their point of collection. In the late 1930s, Charles R. Drew entered this field with a surgeon’s urgency and a systems engineer’s eye. His 1940 doctoral thesis, which earned him the first medical doctorate awarded by Columbia University to an African American, analyzed factors affecting the preservation of blood and plasma under varying conditions and proposed standardized protocols for collection, processing, and storage. He did not simply refine existing experiments; he knit them into a usable, reproducible system. ## Drew’s research and system design Working under a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital, Drew conducted controlled studies on anticoagulants, refrigeration times, centrifugation techniques, and methods for separating plasma from cells. He documented how plasma could be stored longer than whole blood and how careful control of temperature and additives reduced spoilage. Drew then moved from the bench to the network. In 1940, Britain faced air raids and a desperate need for blood products. The “Blood for Britain” project recruited Drew to design and direct a program to collect, process, and ship preserved plasma from the United States. He developed standardized donor cards, labeling, and transport containers; set up centralized processing laboratories; and ensured that plasma arriving in Britain could be matched to clinical needs and tracked back to donors. The success of this program demonstrated that large-scale plasma preservation and transatlantic shipment were not only possible but practical. It provided the template for the American Red Cross’s later national blood banking program and for the use of preserved plasma in World War II military medicine. ## Black labor and segregated institutions Drew’s work was rooted in segregated medical training and practice. He completed his surgical training at McGill University and then at Howard University and Freedmen’s Hospital, institutions that were central to Black medical education. There, Black nurses, laboratory technicians, and junior surgeons carried out transfusions, collected data, and applied evolving plasma protocols in everyday operations. The archive holds that these staff were co-authors of the technology in practice: they identified practical problems, adapted techniques to resource-limited settings, and trained local communities in donor recruitment and transfusion safety. Their work in segregated hospitals and military units extended plasma preservation from elite laboratories into the broader Black public. ## Policy, erasure, and contested credit While Drew was appointed Director of the first American Red Cross blood bank for the military, he confronted a policy that segregated blood donations by race, a practice unsupported by science. His protest and eventual resignation highlighted how racial ideology could shape both who received blood and who received credit. As wartime blood programs expanded, official narratives and institutional histories often foregrounded corporate and governmental bodies, treating plasma preservation and blood banking as impersonal achievements of “the Red Cross” or “military medicine.” Drew’s central role is acknowledged but frequently narrowed to a single line, and the Black staff around him are rendered invisible. The archive reads this pattern—the combination of segregated practice and institution-centered credit—as part of the mechanism by which Black authorship was minimized. Where patents and institutional bylines named organizations rather than individual Black inventors and practitioners, we hold that this reflects the legal and customary bars of the time rather than the absence of Black invention. ## Legacy and ongoing influence Drew died in 1950, but the systems he built endured. Modern blood banks, plasma fractionation industries, and transfusion services operate on principles of standardized collection, preservation, and logistics that descend directly from his wartime work. Civilian trauma centers, maternal care units, and disaster response agencies rely on preserved plasma and other blood products as routine tools. Through his leadership at Howard University, Drew trained a generation of Black surgeons and clinical scientists who carried advanced transfusion practices into Black hospitals and communities that mainstream programs often served last. The archive holds that this cascade of training and practice is part of the authorship of the technology: it ensured that the benefits of plasma preservation were not limited to elite white institutions. Recognizing blood plasma preservation and large-scale blood banking as Black-authored does not diminish the contributions of non-Black researchers and administrators; it restores the central place of Drew and his colleagues in a history that has too often treated their work as a footnote to anonymous institutional progress. ## Sources 1. Spencie Love, One Blood: The Death and Resurrection of Charles R. Drew, University of North Carolina Press, 1996. 2. Robert C. Hayden, African Americans in Medicine, Black Heritage Reference Center of the Toronto Public Library, 1995. ## Related records - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/charles-r-drew - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/blood-bank - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/united-states-blood-plasma-banking - https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/united-states-patent-system-and-black-inventors-after-1865 --- Cite as: Black's Encyclopedia, "Blood Plasma Preservation," revised July 22, 2026. https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/blood-plasma-preservation Text under the Black's Record License: cite the record, keep attribution attached, cite the revision date.