Why Much of What People Have Been Told about Vivien Thomas Is Wrong—and How I Set the Record Straight
Vivien Thomas’s life and work are more significant and compelling than any biographical news article, documentary or Hollywood movie that we’ve ever seen or read. Unfortunately, over the years, there have been a great many stories written and spoken about Vivien Thomas that are contradictory, illogical or just plain wrong. Digging deeper than anyone had done, I discovered essential and original material that allowed me to tell his authentic story for the first time.
Researching Mr. Thomas was like solving a jig-saw puzzle. When I put the matching pieces together, I could see that Vivien Thomas’s actual accomplishments were much greater than had been acknowledged. I also discovered that the extent and depth of the prejudice against him as a Black man was dramatically worse than has been admitted.
How could there have been so many errors in reporting his life? In the past, most of the media had used as their sources the very same white surgeons and university medical institutes that had treated Vivien Thomas so poorly. After all, Mr. Thomas’s accomplishments were only recognized well after the two universities where he’d worked were forced by federal law to desegregate. Then, as the civil rights movement pushed forward and people’s point-of-view about race changed, those people who were telling his story became reluctant to revisit the harsh realities of how Vivien Thomas actually had been treated. Looking back, Mr. Thomas’s amazing resilience and ability to keep going despite adversity may have given others a superficial impression that he was, despite it all, content with his treatment. He was not.
After his retirement, Mr. Thomas wrote a book, published in 1985, about his scientific discoveries. He had feared that his writing would never be accepted by a white press that wouldn’t want to credit a Black man for successful surgeries that already had been named for white doctors. Mr. Thomas decided to heavily censor his own writing about the oppressive racial atmosphere and rampant discrimination at Vanderbilt and Johns Hopkins universities to increase his chances of finding a publisher.
Fortunately, Mr. Thomas had been asked to donate his papers to the Johns Hopkins University Medical Archives and they included his uncensored thoughts and feelings. They were not available in time for PBS’s documentary, “Partners of the Heart,” nor for the HBO bio-pic, Something the Lord Made. As a result, the PBS documentary could not cover the full extent of the discrimination against Mr. Thomas, while the HBO movie was intent on presenting a feel-good story about the accomplishments of Mr. Thomas and his supervisor, Dr. Alfred Blalock.
As the author of eight books and as a trained sociologist, I could see the holes in his story as it had been told previously. To uncover his true story, I explored Mr. Thomas’s original papers at Hopkins. Next, I visited other medical archives around the country to research the papers of the surgeons who’d worked with him. To make certain I had the complete picture, I also interviewed his family members, friends, colleagues and surgeons with whom he worked.
All the fresh information that I learned informed my writing of Vivien Thomas: The Man Who Overcame Racism to Save Millions of Lives. This book tells the authentic story of a seminal figure in American medicine. It will surprise you, anger you and, above all, inspire you.
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