Endowed scholarship will benefit underrepresented medical students

Charles J. Blackwood was born and raised in Trinidad, a small town in southern Colorado. After he graduated from high school there, he thought of running off to join a band. But his family, seeing his academic talent and potential, encouraged college instead.
He stayed local, graduating with honors from Trinidad State Junior College, before heading off to the University of Colorado Boulder on a scholarship. After earning his degree in chemistry in 1943, Blackwood entered the CU School of Medicine and in 1947 became its first Black graduate.
Now his legacy will live on with the Charles J. Blackwood Memorial Endowed Scholarship at the CU School of Medicine, announced Feb. 22. The endowment fund will initially provide funding for full scholarships for at least four students from underrepresented backgrounds who are committed to the African American community. The school intends for the endowment to continue to grow so that it can support additional scholars in perpetuity. It became a reality after private donors contributed more than $1 million, matched by $1 million each from CU School of Medicine Dean Dr. John Reilly and CU President Mark Kennedy.
The Mile High Medical Society, an organization of Black physicians and health care workers, spearheaded the private fundraising effort. And there were times, says the Society’s Dr. Terri Richardson, an internist at Kaiser Permanente, when members wondered if it could happen.

“It was a dream. I thought at many times it was an impossible dream, but to really see this happen, I mean, I just can’t even hardly contain my emotion at this moment that this actually happened. And it shows how you can start with a seed, with a dream and it can become reality. And I call myself a realist, so at times I said, ‘Let’s be real. Is this really going to happen? We’re a small medical society. Can we really make this happen?’ But as we went along and found out about Dr. Blackwood and really did more looking at, why is this important? We saw that we have a lot of supporters and champions out there that also believe that this is a great cause,” Richardson said.
The cause perfectly ties in with a primary focus at the CU School of Medicine. The school’s dean, Dr. John Reilly.
“I think the Blackwood scholarship represents a very visible example of our commitment to diversity. It represents the culmination of a partnership with the Mile High Medical Society that began about four years ago when we started fundraising for this scholarship. And it allows us to recognize the contributions that African American physicians have made at the school and in Colorado,” Reilly said.
He said the scholarship could not have a better namesake that Dr. Blackwood.
“To be the first African American to graduate from our School of Medicine, to be a visible role model in the community, as a person of color, practicing medicine, to be able to build trust with patient populations that have historically had reasons not to trust the medical establishment, were all heavy responsibilities for him, but by all accounts he performed them very, very well,” Reilly said.
During his medical education, Blackwood could only sit in certain places in lecture halls and his living arrangements were separate from the rest of his classmates. He graduated in the top 10 in his class. After an internship at Harlem Hospital in New York, he returned to Colorado to complete his residency at Colorado General and Denver General hospitals.