LaSalle Leffall: groundbreaking American surgeon and educator

Racism was a fact of life in the southern US in the mid-20th century. There were stores downtown that you knew you couldn’t go in as a black person, LaSalle Leffall recounted in an oral history interview with the US Library of Congress.1 Public accommodations such as drinking fountains and bus waiting rooms were clearly labelled for either “white” or “colored” people.

But Leffall never let that impede his advancement. He became a noted cancer surgeon and educator, the first African-American president of the American Cancer Society, and the first to lead the American College of Surgeons, among many other firsts throughout his career.