Sunday, April 12, 2015
Dr. Levi Watkins Jr., a noted Johns Hopkins cardiologist and civil rights activist, died - Baltimore Sun - By Andrea K. McDaniels - He became the first to put an automatic defibrillator in a human heart in 1980 — at a time he was also fighting to diversify the medical staff and student ranks at Hopkins. -- Dr. Watkins was born in Kansas, the third of six children, but grew up in Alabama, where he got his first taste of the civil rights movement. He met Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the age of 8 when he and his family attended Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, where Dr. King was the pastor. When he grew older, Dr. Watkins would act as a driver, shuttling the pastor around town. Disheartened by the injustices he saw, Dr. Watkins would later join Dr. King's movement. - He attended Tennessee State University as an undergraduate, studying biology. He then made history at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, where he became the first African-American to study and graduate from the school with a medical degree. It was an experience he described over the years as isolating and lonely, but would be the first of many milestones.
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