Augustus A. White III was born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1936. He attended segregated schools in Memphis, and graduated from the private Mount Herman School in Northfield Massachusetts in 1953. He completed his premedical studies at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
Dr. White was the first African American medical student at Stanford University, surgical resident at Yale University, professor of medicine at Yale, and department head at a Harvard-affiliated hospital (Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center). From 1966 to 1968, he served as Captain in the United States Army Medical Corps, serving as a combat surgeon at the 85th Evacuation Hospital in Qui Nhon, Vietnam from 1966 to 1967. Since retiring from surgery in 2001, White has researched and written about issues of diversity and cultural sensitivity in medicine.
Dr. Augustus White is the Ellen and Melvin Gordon Distinguished Professor of Medical Education at Harvard Medical School.
"People were of course aware and it would come up from time to time in conversation that I was the first African-American clinical chief or professor in surgery, you know, orthopedic surgery, but working in a hospital in that capacity..."
“And I went on to spend a year and a half in Sweden. And during that period I was working full time in research with no clinical responsibilities and able to complete a thesis and a doctoral thesis on the biomechanics of the spine, of the thoracic spine.”
”The year that I was accepted for the Ten Outstanding Men there were four African-Americans out of the 10 and it was pretty rare...The four individuals were Gale Sayers, who was a superstar professional running back, a fellow named Melvin Floyd who was a policeman and a minister and that was unique, and Jesse Jackson -- not Jesse Jackson Junior, Jesse Jackson -- and I was the fourth one.”