# Dr. Charles Richard Drew, Charles Alston's 1943 OWI profile of the plasma surgeon A 1943 Office of War Information profile sheet drawn by Charles Alston presents Dr. Charles Richard Drew of Howard University as an authority on preserving blood plasma, director of the first Red Cross blood bank for the armed forces, and a college track star who "missed the Olympics by the flip of a coin!!" - Home - Archive - Dr. Charles Richard Drew, Charles Alston's 1943 OWI profile of the plasma surgeon Dr. Charles Richard Drew, M.D., C.M., Med. D.Sc. (profile sheet) Dr. Charles Richard Drew, Charles Alston's 1943 OWI profile of the plasma surgeon Charles Alston's 1943 OWI profile of Dr. Charles R. Drew credits his plasma work, the first Red Cross blood bank for the armed forces, and his athletics. ## Techniques named on the archive record TestimonialTransfer Date1943Made byOffice of War Information (cartoon artwork; artist Charles Alston)MediumCartoonCountryUnited StatesRegimeRoosevelt AdministrationNARANAID 535594; NAID 535693; Record Group 208SourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceU.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 208, Cartoon Artworks and Mockups (NAID 535594) , retrieved October 3, 2026SourcePublic domain (U.S. government work) Office of War Information. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 208, 208-COM-230 (NAID 535693). Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records. Full record at propagandaarchive.org A 1943 Office of War Information profile sheet drawn by Charles Alston presents Dr. Charles Richard Drew of Howard University as an authority on preserving blood plasma, director of the first Red Cross blood bank for the armed forces, and a college track star who "missed the Olympics by the flip of a coin!!" ## On the sheet A pencil-and-ink portrait of Drew fills the center. Around it, small scenes show war graves and wounded soldiers on one side and Drew as a hurdler and a coach on the other. Each scene carries a block of hand-lettered capitals, so the sheet reads like a page of a picture biography. CHARLIE DREW WAS ONLY A YOUNGSTER IN GRAMMAR SCHOOL WHEN THOUSANDS OF AMERICAN DOUGHBOYS DIED IN THE LAST WAR BECAUSE OF LACK OF ADEQUATE BLOOD TRANSFUSION TECHNIQUES. THIRTY-NINE YEAR OLD DR. DREW'S WORK IN STANDARDIZING THE PREPARATION OF BLOOD PLASMA, WILL SAVE THE LIVES OF COUNTLESS UNITED NATIONS FIGHTING MEN ON BATTLE FRONTS ALL OVER THE WORLD. Dr. Charles Richard Drew, M.D., C.M., Med.D.Sc. PROFESSOR OF SURGERY, HOWARD UNIVERSITY, CHIEF SURGEON, FREEDMEN'S HOSPITAL, WASHINGTON, D.C. […] RECOGNIZED AUTHORITY ON THE PREPARATION AND PRESERVATION OF BLOOD PLASMA. ~ MEDICAL DIRECTOR OF THE PLASMA FOR BRITAIN PROJECT, AND DIRECTOR OF THE FIRST RED CROSS BLOOD BANK SET UP FOR THE COLLECTION OF BLOOD AND PLASMA FOR THE AMERICAN ARMED FORCES. […] DESPITE HIS ACHIEVEMENTS IN MEDICINE, HE RECALLS HIS POST AS COACH AT MORGAN COLLEGE AS "THE BEST JOB I EVER DID!" alston OWI Excerpt, FRAME transcription; omitted lines list Drew's hurdling, football honors, and the athletes he is ranked beside. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. ## Who made it The sheet is signed "alston OWI." It is one of the Office of War Information's cartoon artworks and mockups held in Record Group 208 at the National Archives (series NAID 535594, item NAID 535693, local id 208-COM-230). Alston drew many profiles in this file, among them Paul Robeson and George Washington Carver. The record does not say which papers printed the Drew sheet. ## A testimonial for a medical idea The archive tags testimonial and transfer. Most testimonials borrow a famous face to sell something unrelated. This one runs the other way: the thing being sold, banked plasma, is the man's own work, and the sheet uses his athletic fame to make a laboratory achievement easy to admire. The first panel sets up the stakes with a claim about the last war's dead, given as "thousands" with no source, and the second answers it with Drew. The details are specific and checkable in form: a professorship at Howard, the chief surgeon's post at Freedmen's Hospital, the Plasma for Britain project, the first Red Cross blood bank for the American armed forces. The government here speaks about a Black American scientist as a national asset, by name and with his degrees in full, during a war in which it also needed his work. The quoted line about coaching at Morgan is the only place Drew speaks for himself. The archive holds no other document about Drew, so this page stops at what the sheet prints. The Red Cross side of the plasma effort is in Lives Saved by Plasma and the blood-donor posters gathered in US public health messaging, 1917–1969. ## Sources - FRAME object record, Dr. Charles Richard Drew, M.D., C.M., Med. D.Sc. (profile sheet), 1943. Office of War Information, cartoon artwork; artist Charles Alston. - U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 208, Cartoon Artworks and Mockups, series NAID 535594, item NAID 535693, local id 208-COM-230, catalog record, retrieved by the archive 3 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work). Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/us-owi-alston-dr-charles-richard-drew-profile-1943/