On the night of December 1,1950, a 24-year-old Army veteran named Maltheus Avery died following a car accident—after having been turned away from Duke Hospital because of his race. Reported around the country, Avery’s tragedy provoked national outrage and inspired a medical civil rights campaign. How could a respected Methodist school committed to embodying the “New South” have allowed such a tragedy to happen?
UNHEALED: A Story of Race, Memory, and a Teaching Hospital, a seven-episode podcast, retells this story and asks why it matters today. Featuring interviews with family, scholars, and community members, it explores how people who considered themselves progressive for their time did not see the workings of racism around them. It’s about the complicated history of Duke and its home community in North Carolina. And most of all, it’s the story of a family that faced unimaginable loss and yet found the will to challenge the system that had failed them.
E1: What's Past is Present
The COVID-19 pandemic forced medical schools to reckon with their racial legacies. But what does that really mean? Is it enough to acknowledge the history of medical racism in broad strokes, or blame mistrust on notorious research scandals? Or do medical schools need to take a deeper dive to better understand their local communities? This episode sharpens those questions by focusing on Duke University and Durham—and sets up the context for Maltheus Avery’s story.
E2: How Two Stories Became One
For nearly 40 years Maltheus Avery’s story was forgotten at Duke—until uncovered by a historian researching the death of Charles Drew, the famed African-American pioneer of blood banking. It turns out that both men died following car accidents in 1950 just a few miles apart—and that Avery’s real-life tragedy helped give rise to the legend that Drew had been refused treatment because of his race.
E3: A Family’s Story
Here we trace the arc of Maltheus Avery’s short life, revealing the promise of the American Dream for the Avery family and its collision with the realities of Jim Crow America. We share how his death transformed the lives of his two brothers—both of whom dedicated themselves to become health professionals who challenged the system that had failed Maltheus.
E4: “No Room at the Inn”
African-American newspapers propelled Avery’s story across the country, recast as a modern “no room at the inn” Christmas story set in the Jim Crow South. An unlikely band of southern radicals seized the events to launch one of the first U.S. civil rights campaigns against segregated hospital care—a movement that eventually reached the ears of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
E5: Invisible Racism
Part of what made Avery’s death so tragic was that it happened at Duke University, founded by Methodists and widely regarded in that era as a forward-thinking institution. In this episode we look at how Duke’s leaders responded to criticism from all over the country—and ask the hard question: Does the fact that in 1950 segregated hospital care was the law of the land in southern states let Duke off the hook?
E6: Moments to Movements
A lot has happened at Duke (and in the U.S.) since 1950—including the Civil Rights movement that marked the end of legal segregation. Why, then, did its medical campus erupt in 2020 against the continuing power of medical racism? This episode recounts what changed—and what didn’t—in the wake of the 1960s.
E7: What Now? Why This Story Matters
Our final episode takes on the central question of this entire podcast: When there is so much work to do in combatting medical racism, why is it still critical to start with history? We talk with community leaders, historians, medical students, and Duke Health executives. But most of all, we hear from the living members of the Avery family—including the daughter born just a week after Maltheus Avery’s death.