The Top 21: Our List of Outstanding Black Doctors

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Levi Watkins, M.D., is a professor of surgery and associate dean at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine; the first black man to hold these posts.  His remarkable journey started in Alabama. As a son of the south, Watkins was exposed to racial injustices and to the early civil rights movement, both of which had lasting effects. He went on to become a history maker.  Dr. Watkins was the first black student admitted to Vanderbilt University Medical School in Tennessee.  From there he went on to Hopkins for his surgical residency in 1970.  Years later he joined the admissions committee of the medical school and thereafter minority representation increased 400 percent.  Dr. Watkins’ interest in worldwide human rights led him to start the annual Martin Luther King commemoration at Hopkins in 1982, a tradition that continues.  In January 2010, he was appointed co-chair of Balitmore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s transition team for Health and Human Services.  In April 2010 Dr. Watkins received the Thurgood Marshall College Fund award for excellence in medicine.

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