The Rotation: A Himmelfarb Library Blog

The Rotation is proud to continue our observance of Black History Month with a look at the life of Dr. Louis W. Sullivan, MD, the founding Dean of Morehouse School of Medicine, and the second African American appointed as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). Louis Wade Sullivan was born in 1933 in the rural town of Blakely, Georgia. From an early age, Wade knew he wanted to be a doctor thanks to the influence of Dr. Joseph Griffin, the only Black doctor in the region. According to Sullivan’s memoir, Breaking Ground: My Life in Medicine (available in print and e-book at Himmelfarb Library):

...neither Blakley nor any of its surrounding towns had a black doctor or a black hospital. If you were sick enough that you needed medical attention, you could do without and let nature take its course, you could go to one of the local root doctors, … or you could go to the white doctor, but that meant going around back and sitting in a separate waiting room, which people considered demeaning. It meant you were acquiescing to the so-called universal presumption of black inferiority. That was a constant black people had to put up with in Blakely, as they did all over the South, but they didn’t like it.

The other option was that you could go to Dr. Griffin, who treated patients at his twenty-five-bed hospital in Bainbridge. Having Dr. Griffin take care of you was more in keeping with your dignity. It was also something of a statement of independence, tinged with defiance. It meant that there were some things at least, that you would not put up with if you could help it (Sullivan, Chanoff, &Young, 2014).

Sullivan’s father was the town of Blakely’s only African American mortician, and often used his hearse as an ambulance to transport black patients who did not have other means of transportation to Dr. Griffin’s hospital to receive the medical care they needed (Sullivan, Chanoff, &Young, 2014). Sullivan recalls being “completely taken by how a doctor could help very ill people get better. … I wanted to be exactly like Dr. Griffin” (Sullivan, Chanoff, &Young, 2014).

Sullivan studied pre-med at Morehouse College (Harvard College, 2020). He graduated from Morehouse in 1954 - the same year as the historic Brown vs. Board of Education ruling that declared school segregation unconstitutional (Talesnik, 2016). He then started medical school at Boston University School of Medicine, where he was the only African American student in his class, and only one of three African American students in the medical school (Talesnik, 2016). He graduated third in his medical school class in 1958 (Harvard College, 2020). 

He completed his medical training at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, where he was the first Black intern at the institution (Talesnik, 2016). During his time at Cornell Medical Center, Sullivan completed a fellowship in hematology. He followed that up with a pathology fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital and a hematology fellowship at Harvard’s Thorndike Laboratory at Boston City Hospital (Sullivan, Chanoff, &Young, 2014). One of his most notable research studies looked at the correlation between alcoholism and its impact on the human-blood-forming system (Rees & Labosier, 2023). In 1966, Sullivan became the co-director of Hematology at Boston University Medical Center, in 1967, he founded Boston University Hematology Service at Boston City Hospital and directed the Boston Sickle Cell Center (Rees & Labosier, 2023).

In the mid-1970s, Sullivan returned to Morehouse to help establish and serve as the founding dean of the Morehouse School of Medicine (Harvard College, 2020). The Morehouse School of Medicine became “the only four-year medical school organized for black students in the 20th century, joining Howard University School of Medicine and Meharry Medical College, which had been founded in the 19th century” (Talesnik, 2016). In 1976, Sullivan partnered with Dr. Walter Bowie, and Anthony Rachal to found the Association on Minority Health Professions Schools (AMHPS) to promote a national minority health agenda and “quantifying the health status and health personnel needs of the minority community” (Association of Minority Health Professions Schools, n.d.).

In 1989, Sullivan was appointed as the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) by President George H.W. Bush becoming only the second African American to serve in this position (Harvard College, 2020). During his time as Secretary of HHS, Sullivan spearheaded the creation of the NIH Office of Minority Health, which is now the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), as well as the appointment of Dr. Bernadine Healy as the first female director of the NIH, Dr. Antonia Novello as the first female and Hispanic surgeon general, and the first female HHS chief of staff (Talesnik, 2016). One key accomplishment of Sullivan’s time as Secretary of HHS was getting new standardized nutrition labels on packaged foods to help Americans make healthier choices, which received pushback from the FDA and the Department of Agriculture over concerns of potential harm to the dairy and cattle industries (Talesnik, 2016). Sullivan stated that grocery stores have “become a Tower of Babel and consumers need to be linguists, scientists, and mind readers to understand the many labels they see” before the new standardized food labels were adopted (Institute of Medicine US Committee on Examination of Front-of-Package Nutrition Rating Systems and Symbols, 2010).

When his term as Secretary of HHS ended, Sullivan returned to Morehouse School of Medicine to serve as two-time dean and president of the school (1980-1989 and 1993-2002) and was named President Emeritus in 2003 (Morehouse School of Medicine, 2025). Sullivan has served in numerous other leadership roles during his career including the Co-Chair of the President’s Commission on HIV and AIDS (2001-2006), Chairman of the President’s Commission on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (2002-2009), and currently serves as Chairman and Founder of the Sullivan Alliance to Transform the Health Professions (Harvard College, 2020).

Sullivan published his latest book We’ll Fight It Out Here: A History of the Ongoing Struggle for Health Equity in 2022. To learn more about Dr. Sullivan through his own words, here’s a fascinating video of an NIH Fireside Chat with Dr. Sullivan:  

https://videocast.nih.gov/watch=54588

References: 

Association of Minority Health Professions Schools. (n.d.). Homepage. https://amhps.org/

Harvard College. (2020). Louis Wade Sullivan, MD (Second African-American U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services). Perspectives of Change. https://perspectivesofchange.hms.harvard.edu/node/191

Haskins, J. (February 25, 2019). Celebrating 10 African-American medical pioneers. AAMC News. https://www.aamc.org/news/celebrating-10-african-american-medical-pioneers

Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Examination of Front-of-Package Nutrition Rating Systems and Symbols, Wartella, E. A., Lichtenstein, A. H., & Boon, C. S. (Eds.). (2010). Front-of-package nutrition rating systems and symbols: Phase I report. National Academies Press (US).

Morehouse School of Medicine. (2025). Presidents of Morehouse School of Medicine. Morehouse School of Medicine website. https://www.msm.edu/about_us/PastPresidents.php

Rees, J.P, Labosier, J. (November 2, 2023). Louis W. Sullivan papers now available for research. Circulating Now. https://circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov/2023/11/02/louis-w-sullivan-papers-now-available-for-research/

Sullivan, L.W., Chanoff, D., & Young, A. (2014). Breaking ground: My life in medicine (1st ed.). The University of Georgia Press.

Talesnik, D. (November 18, 2016). Former HHS Secretary devotes life to diversity. NIH Record LXVIII, 24). https://nihrecord.nih.gov/2016/11/18/former-hhs-secretary-devotes-life-diversity