January 17, 2004
Raleigh City Museum Announces Pieces of the Past Spring 2004 Lectures
Series begins with a slide talk on former Leonard Medical School

RALEIGH, N.C. (January 16, 2004) - The Raleigh City Museum will introduce its Pieces of the Past Spring 2004 Lecture Series with a presentation by Dr. Todd Savitt, professor of Medical Humanities at East Carolina University School of Medicine. The slide lecture, entitled "Educating African-American Physicians in Raleigh, NC: Leonard Medical School of Shaw University, 1882-1918," will be held on Saturday, February 21, 2004 at 2:00 p.m. in the museum's lower level classroom. This presentation is made possible by a grant from the North Carolina Humanities Council and is free to the general public.

Leonard Medical School in Raleigh was one of fourteen medical schools founded in the United States between 1868 and 1900 dedicated to the education of African-Americans. Over its 36-year history, Leonard graduated almost 400 physicians. Founded with great promise in 1882, Leonard, like its sister black medical schools, struggled to survive financially as it tried to keep up with changes in medical education and medical science during the late nineteenth century. Race issues added an extra burden. Only two African-American medical schools, Meharry University and Howard University, survived after 1923. This slide talk will discuss Leonard's founding, the life of its students, the school's successes and stresses, and its unhappy closing in 1918.

Todd Savitt is currently a Professor of Medical Humanities at East Carolina University School of Medicine, where he teaches social and ethnical issues in medicine and coordinates the ECU Medical School's Readers' Theater. He is a graduate of Colgate University (A.B., History) and the University of Virginia (M.A., Ph.D., American History). Dr. Savitt also received post-doctoral training at Duke University in the History of Medicine and the History of Science. Dr. Savitt has been active in the American Association for the History of Medicine since 1981 and presently holds the office of Secretary-Treasurer. A member of the North Carolina Humanities Council from 1986-1991, he now serves as a grants panelist and reviewer for the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Institutes of Health.

The museum's Pieces of the Past Lecture Series also includes "In Search of a New Deal: Images of North Carolina, 1935-1941,"on Saturday March 6 at 2 p.m., and "Building a New South: Raleigh's Modernist Architecture, 1948-1965," on Saturday, March 27 at 2 p.m.

For more information on these events, please contact Ken Peters, Coordinator of Education & Outreach, at 832-3775 ext. 11.

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