Wartime Harlem got its "Double V" victory --- sort of

WWII's famous "Double V" campaign --- a military victory over Axis evil abroad and a moral victory in truly welcoming human diversity at home -- was led mainly by black Americans - many of them from Harlem.

Most black Americans back then (and most historians today) think the campaign basically failed.

But the story on the ground in Harlem itself, a story told from the point of view of the Nash Building and the Lutheran Hospital, suggests a different and more ambiguously hopeful story.

What capped the overseas military victory, in most peoples' eyes, was the autarky-oriented American-only atomic bomb dropped over Japan, based on gaseous diffusion technology developed at Harlem's Nash building.

(A technology that produced most of the world's cold war nuclear weapons that still threatens our world.)

Despite this effort being set in Harlem, only one black American, scientist James Forde, worked in that building, helping perfect the Bomb's technology.

 This was a clear sign of the wartime Allies' failure to practise at home the kind of acceptance of human diversity that they preached in their overseas propaganda.

But a few hundred metres away from the Nash, at Harlem's old Lutheran Hospital, a happier story was being played out.

For just days after the July 1943 Harlem Riots revealed to the world the Allies' racial divide, a young crippled Italian-American surgical resident broke all the rules to try and save the life of a dying baby named Patty Malone.

After twelve shamefully silent years, the good news story of potent life-saving powers of penicillin finally broke wide, virtually overnight: broke Stateside and Worldwide.

That young doctor, Dante Colitti, was inspired by the example of another crippled (in fact dying) doctor from his own neighbourhood -- Nova Scotia born and raised Martin Henry Dawson.

Dr Dawson worked at the world famous Columbia Presbyterian Medical Centre, just a little further up the hill from the Lutheran Hospital.

Since September 1940 he had been growing his own hospital-brewed penicillin, to try save young patients with invariably fatal SBE - patients that the wartime Allies sentenced to death by not-so-benign neglect, because they deemed them not of military or economic significance.

SBE was also a disease that disproportionally hit minorities and immigrants the hardest - 'The Polio of the Poor'.

(These two facts are not coincidental .)

Dawson had given the world's first injections of penicillin, ushering in our present Age of Antibiotics, to a black from Harlem and to a Jew from the Bronx.

This too was not coincidental .

It was Dawson's way of protesting  the medical elite's determination to use the claim of war necessity as an excuse to ignore the illnesses of the poor, not to heal them.

He wanted to save these SBE patients for their own sakes --- but also to put teeth into the Allies' claim that they were committed to the welfare of all humanity unlike the uncaring Axis.

It was Dawson's way of seeing that the victory over the Axis abroad was hastened by - and matched by - a moral victory over hatred at home.

Dawson won his fight - Allied attempts to patent penicillin and limit its wartime use to only those they deemed worthy to receive it failed.

Thanks to Dawson and Colitti, wartime penicillin was mass produced in Brooklyn and send worldwide, in a Christ-like spirit of 'open commensality', to try and save all those dying for lack of it - whether white or dark, rich or poor, friend or enemy.

I believe that it is past due time that Harlem re-examined its significant role in 1945's ambiguous "Double V" victories.

Because the mixed lessons those twin victories sent out to postwar kids everywhere still shapes our now boomer-led world, as it faces another global crisis in the SIXTH EXTINCTION ...

Gotham's hunky comicbook super-heroes written and drawn by 97 lb Jewish weaklings and a 4F Negro with a bad heart

Forgotten black comic book pioneer Matt Baker, Harlem artist 1921-1959

In 1940 Gotham City (and in the rest of America and the world) , if we can judge by the popularity of certain new super-heroes, moral strength seemed to be equated with physical strength.

Perfect morals requiring a perfect body.

Unfits need not apply to be super-heroes or indeed any kind of hero - moral or physical.

Ironic then if we look deep behind the colourful covers of Gotham's Golden Age of Comics because there we see them mostly written and drawn by weedy Jewish kids from poverty row , along with at least black artist with a bad heart, Matt Baker.


Clarence Matthew Baker was born down South in December 1921 and suffered a bad childhood attack from "the polio of the poor" (Rheumatic Fever) which permanently weakened his heart valves.

Probably told not to play strenuous sports , he learned to love to draw and after high school came to New York to learn art skills at the famous Cooper Union and freelance as an illustrator.

His forte was extremely gorgeous women (and hunky good looking men !) and he soon found enough work to keep him fed and housed.

No comic book artist got well paid or published credits in those days, so he doesn't seem to have suffered any worse in his art career than his white friends and competitors.

(Baker lived at 103 E 116th Street in Harlem.)

Like athlete and coach Aaron Leroy Alston, Baker's story is another case of what might have been, if only his heart condition could have been prevented or cured so he could have lived longer.

Tragically he died, aged only 37, in 1959 --  well before comic book artists found world fame.

His return to partial fame is based on the fact he was the pencil artist for a pioneering graphic novel, "IT RHYMES WITH LUST".

This in turn led to a fuller examination of his total work and to ask - were there other pioneering black comic book artists out there being overlooked ?

But let me state as gently as possible that whether as white protestant or Jew or black, all these comic book artists of the 1940s only got work if they played ball within the social conventions of the day.

That meant no weedy Jew or weak-hearted black (or weedy weak hearted white) was going to be seen in these comic books defeating criminals and Nazis.

So even when non-Aryan hunks took on blond beast Aryan hunks - the Aryans lost the resulting physical battle but won the real (intellectual) battle : their claim that only the physically fit were morally fit.

By way of contrast, in 1940 Dr (Martin) Henry Dawson tried to save weak-hearted Alston's life and would have tried to save Baker's as well (if he had gotten sick in his early twenties instead of his late thirties.)

Dawson saw the 'unfit' as worthy of a full life and worthy of being allowed to do great moral deeds.

He saw potential moral super-heroes everywhere - in the physically fit and in the physically challenged ....

'There's just something about a Mercury ' : how the potential of a young black man kickstarted penicillin and has benefitted ten billion of us ever since

Can we still - 75 years on - get some sense of the personality of the very first person in history to get an antibiotics injection ?

Fortunately , yes.

But why then should we even care ?

Because, children , just because.

Because the normally reserved doctor who kickstarted natural lifesaving penicillin-for-all (the medical approach that has benefited about ten billion of us since 1940) personally wrote and told Nobel winning Ernst Chain that this patient's personality and potential had directly inspired him to take up his penicillin crusade.

When the personality of a young black man inspired medicine's biggest ever paradigm shift, an event that saved my life and that of many in my family, of course I want to know all I can about this wonderful person.

And if you have ever had a family member saved by antibiotics and if you have even an ounce of gratitude within you, so should you.

So here is a long "letter to the editor" that A. (Aaron) Leroy Alston wrote , addressed to the black-oriented New York Age newspaper in early April 1939.

That is just 18 months before he received that historic first ever needle.

And it allows us to learn something of the patient who inspired a doctor to change our whole world for the better , forever .

Words of first patient in history to get an antibiotics injection

Aaron, a young black man with a high school graduation certificate , held a good day job in an insurance company at the height of the Great Depression.

This is quite impressive because the Depression was a tragic event for most Americans but certainly hit black Harlem extra extra hard.

He was also a winning track star who then founded the Mercury Athletic Club.

The club, with him as coach, manager, pr rep and fundraiser , focused on seeing that Harlem's black female runners finally got a chance to compete in the big races.

They did very well, as he says in this letter to the editor - for the first time black girls were being judged as the best runners in America in various categories.

Who knows what further good young Aaron might have done if only Alexander Fleming had tried harder, earlier, to see to it that penicillin become a real lifesaver.

True, (Martin) Henry Dawson in October 1940 did kickstart the process to make penicillin into a cheap abundant lifesaver that was available to all .

But though Dawson was inspired to do so by seeing all of young Alston's great potential going with him if he should die,  Dawson had made too little penicillin - at that time - to save Aaron.

So young Aaron died. But he was not a victim or a loser.

He had already done a lot.

And I sincerely believe that for all the good he might have gone on to do over a long life, if he hadn't contracted invariably fatal SBE endocarditis, it would never have matched what he did do as a dying patient.

For when his buoyant-personality-in-the-face-of-imminent-death met a doctor looking for a way to help retain social values in the middle of a big war, our whole world started to change for the better.

Who among us - including the fictional trio of Anne of Green Gables, Pollyanna and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm - can claim that great honour ?

First patient to get a penicillin shot , Harlem's Aaron Leroy Alston , possibly not a widower.

Census information on individuals is always useful but bring along a couple grains of salt.

 A possible case in point is whether or not history's first antibiotics patient, Harlem's Aaron Leroy Alston, was or was not a widower - as reported by his mother on his January 1941 death certificate.

 After all there was no indication he had ever been married let alone widowed on the April 1940 census - where he was simply known as Leroy Alston - the name family and friends called him.

His nephew Claude Jay told me he does not recall any in the extended Glaze family mentioning that Leroy was ever married widowed or separated.

 But the 1930 census tells a different story.

 Born in Rockhill South Carolina in 1910 , Leroy had arrived in Harlem in 1923, an only child, with his mother mother Louise (Glaze) Alston and his father William "Stock" Alston and his cousin Reginald Daniels, about his same age.

They then opened a restaurant at the corner of 8th Avenue and 148th Street.

 By 1930, Aaron and his mother are living in different apartments in Harlem.

 Louise is reported as a widow - and a check of the indexed NYC death certificates does show a death of a William Alston on March 12 1924 , at the very young age of age 36.

 She is described as a waitress working in a tea shop and earning an appallingly low annual income.

 A. Leroy Alston, which was the preferred way that Leroy liked to call himself in print, in 1930 is shown as married to a Charlotte L Alston.

 It indicated both married two years earlier at 18 , on completing High School.

 She is a homemaker and Leroy has a good job - a clerk in a NY Underwriters office ( fire insurance) .

 A check of the indexed death certificates finds no dead Charlotte Alston in all NYC up to the end of 1948 - period.

 Instead in 1940 , the census shows a Charlotte L (L for maiden name Lee ?) Alston, living in Harlem as a daughter to Julia Lee and her age and birth state is the same as indicated in 1930.

 Now it is true that census returns , until recently, almost never used the words separated, deserted , divorced or common law.

 My partner's own father's parents both remarried without getting an (expensive / public) divorce first and continued to live very close to each other in rural Nova Scotia!

 Older family adults probably knew and small children - and the authorites - were never set wise.

 If the couple separated and both returned home to live with mother , it wasn't for lack of jobs during the terrible Great Depression which destroyed so many families in Harlem.

 Leroy kept his good job and worked it a full 52 weeks in 1939.

Many breadwinners then , white and black , had only intermittent work even when employed.

 It is mystery , either way this widowed/married or not issue is finally resolved ....

A. Leroy Alston , noted New York black athlete , was first person in history to get a shot of penicillin - Oct 16 1940 Manhattan

Penicillin histories record the first person ever to receive an antibiotics shot only as Aaron Alston and that is about it.

Aaron himself (along with his family and friends) called himself Leroy.

He signed himself A. Leroy Alston whenever he appeared in the newspapers (which he did fairly frequently) in his role as an outstanding amateur athlete and athletic coach.

His parents Louise (Glaze) Alston and William (known as Stock) Alston came from Georgia and arrived in Harlem in 1923 , with their only child Leroy actually being born in South Carolina in 1910.

His family ran a restaurant on 8th Avenue in Harlem and lived in the Sugar Hill district of Harlem.

He finished high school and worked as a file clerk in a fire insurance company.

On the 1930 census he was married to Charlotte L Alston , about his same age, but she had died by time of the 1940 census - as had his father.

Leroy's real passion was for athletics - a  winning runner at major matches and great in baseball, he was best known for coaching a girls' track and field team ,the Mercury ACs - in fact he fundraised for them and promoted them non stop.

No wonder his doctor Martin Henry Dawson described him  to Ernst Chain, as a patient "in whom he was particularly interested "...

MANHATTAN's Vita Com Mensa PROJECT : WWII's tiny green anomaly

My book ( ebook? website? blog? series of the same? all of the above?) might seem a grimly dystopic account of WWII.

But I will also present an uplifting hopeful counterpose against the horrors of this essentially modest, restrained, sentimental modern war .

That is to say, it could have been much more modern and hence much much worse.

This counterpose is a 1940s green alternative, from the heart of Harlem ,that still offers the best way forward for all of us.

 Of course I am talking about WWII's 'tiny green anomaly' : Dr Martin Henry Dawson's Vita Com Mensa project.

It involved microbes and man more or less working together commensal fashion , to bring wartime humanity the great boon of systemic, natural, penicillin for all ...