Augustus A. White III (Class of 1957) documents relating to his career as a surgeon during the Vietnam War (AMS.1U.2016.002)

Biographical / Historical

Augustus A. White III was born on June 4, 1936 in Memphis, Tennessee. His father was a physician and his mother was a librarian and high school teacher. He attended high school at the Mount Hermon School for Boys prep school (now Northfield Mount Hermon) in Massachusetts. He then graduated from Brown University in 1957. While at Brown he became the first African American to become a fraternity brother when he rushed Delta Upsilon fraternity. He went on to be the first African American to graduate from Stanford Medical School in 1961 and the first surgical resident at Yale-New Haven Hospital in 1963. He is a Vietnam Veteran serving for 2 years as an army surgeon. He was stationed at the 85th Evacuation Hospital in the Qui Nhon region of Vietnam during August 1966 – August 1967. During that year he also volunteered during his off-duty time at the St. Francis Leprosarium run by Catholic nuns in a nearby village where he treated patients fighting leprosy. After his army service he received his PhD in orthopedic biomechanics from the Karolinska Institute in Gothenburg, Sweden where he also met and married his wife Anita.

He has had a long and distinguished career including full Professor of Orthopedic Surgery at Yale Medical School, chief of the orthopedic surgery department at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, and Director of the Harvard Medical School among many other positions. He has written over 200 scientific and clinical publications including books, chapters and articles on the biomechanics of the spine, fracture healing, and surgical and non-surgical care of the spine.

White has also been keenly interested in issues of bias, prejudice, and disparities in medical care and education. While a member of the Board of Fellows (1981-1992) at Brown University he lead an effort of improve race relationships at Brown which culminated with the report The American University and the Pluralist Ideal in 1986. He has pursued the topic of prejudice within the medical system with increased energy since his retirement from the operating room in 2001. He wrote Seeing Patients: Unconscious Bias in Health Care in 2011 and has established Harvard's Culturally Competent Care Education Program.

He and his wife Anita have three daughters including Atina White, Brown Class of 1998.