First African-American graduate honored

The first African-American to graduate from the School of Medicine has been honored with a new scholarship, which once fully endowed will help recruit and support outstanding students from underrepresented groups entering public health. After his graduation in 1857, Cortlandt Van Rensselaer Creed, M.D., became a prominent New Haven physician and a Civil War surgeon. He was consulted in the shooting of President Garfield in 1881, and his forensic work in the investigation of a New Haven woman’s murder played a part in Virginia A. McConnell’s novel about Victorian New Haven, Arsenic under the Elms. The Creed/ Patton/Steele Scholarship Campaign was initiated with gifts by alumnus Robert E. Steele, M.P.H. ’71, Ph.D. ’75, and also honors Creed historian Curtis L. Patton, Ph.D., professor of epidemiology (microbiology) and public health. To date, $64,000 of the $100,000 fund goal has been raised.