As an assistant dean of variety and inclusion at USC, Dr. Althea Alexander hung out talking in highschool school rooms throughout the US, searching for undeveloped expertise amongst Black and brown college students in hopes of guiding them towards the sector of drugs.
She mentored minority medical college students and sought to enhance the varsity’s efforts to recruit numerous college students. Her work, spanning 5 many years, paid off tenfold: She influenced the profession paths of a whole lot who would go on to change into medical faculty deans, chief executives and even California’s surgeon common.
Alexander, 89, died on July 17 after struggling a mind hemorrhage, in accordance with her daughter, Kim Alexander-Brettler. Her mom shaped deep and enduring relationships pushed by a ardour for civil rights and sincerity in serving to younger individuals higher themselves and their communities, Alexander-Brettler mentioned.
“It’s not something she needed to apply,” Alexander-Brettler mentioned. “It got here from her soul. It got here very naturally for her to present.”
Alexander arrived at USC in 1968, changing into the primary feminine and Black school member. On the time, there was one Black and one Latino medical pupil enrolled. Alexander sought to vary that. USC estimates that she influenced the lives of at the very least 800 minority college students on the Keck College of Medication by her retirement in 2019.
In 1969, she grew to become the inaugural dean of Minority Affairs, which might later change into the Workplace of Range and Inclusion. In 1992, she instructed The Occasions that she believed college students of colour had been by no means instructed that they’d the intelligence, functionality or sensitivity to change into medical doctors, and he or she wished to instill that in them as early as she might.
She spoke at excessive faculties and inspired college students to keep up a correspondence. She promised the scholars and their households that in the event that they put within the work, she would assist them as greatest as she might to seek out them a spot in a medical faculty.
“We now have to coach younger individuals to make a contribution to society,” she instructed The Occasions. “If somebody would give us a grant to start out in kindergarten, I might do this.”
Amongst them was Dr. Diana E. Ramos, who was a excessive schooler headed to USC for undergrad when she met Althea and her husband, Fredric. At an annual check-up, Ramos met a nurse practitioner who launched her to her boss, Fredric, after studying she wished to be a health care provider. He launched her to his spouse, an assistant dean at USC’s medical faculty, and from then on, Althea grew to become a guiding power for Ramos, who was born in South Central and the primary in her household to go to school. Ramos graduated from USC’s medical faculty in 1994.
“Every time I used to be wanting to surrender or simply wanted a bit of pep speak, she was all the time there,” mentioned Ramos, who grew to become California’s surgeon common in 2022. When Ramos took on the function with lingering emotions of inadequacy, Alexander quelled these doubts and instructed her she was match for the job. “After all,” her mentor instructed her. “Why not you?”
At USC, Alexander pushed admissions to think about non-traditional experiences along with grades and check scores, corresponding to contemplating an applicant’s work and household historical past. She and her household hosted dozens of scholars, typically for months at a time, of their residence. Alexander helped others pay hire and purchased vehicles for many who couldn’t afford them so they might attend faculty, Alexander-Brettler mentioned.
Alexander had a nationwide and worldwide affect as effectively, with lots of the college students at USC occurring to review throughout the nation. At a memorial service held Saturday, the place former college students shared tales of her impression on their lives, audio system shared how Alexander inspired them to come back to the U.S. from China to broaden their medical training.
She didn’t shrink back about talking bluntly about racism within the medical area. She beforehand instructed The Occasions about an occasion when she went to the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Middle to hunt assist after breaking her arm. A white attending resident instructed her to “maintain your arm such as you often maintain your can of beer on Saturday evening.”
“What are you speaking about?” she demanded. “Do you assume I’m a welfare mom?”
She instructed college students that they’d absolutely confront the identical points.
“This isn’t a utopia,” Alexander would say. “You’re what you might be. … You can not die on each hill right here. If anyone makes a racist remark in school, you can not spend all of your vitality on that. Be principled and cope with it. Say: ‘I don’t recognize that.’ Then, transfer on.”
She shared a ardour for civil rights advocacy, becoming a member of protesters throughout the East L.A. protests in 1970, and had a United Farm Staff flag hanging in her workplace signed by Cesar Chavez.
Alexander had identified her husband, Fredric Eugene, since they had been youngsters as a result of their dad and mom had been union organizers. However in 1959, a younger civil rights chief named Martin Luther King Jr. reintroduced the 2. Fredric and Althea married on the Unitarian Church in downtown L.A. Fredric died in 2009.
Althea Alexander was born March 16, 1935, in Berkeley. Along with her daughter, she is survived by her son, Sean Alexander, and granddaughters Danielle and Lauren Brettler.
Alexander beloved music and made a behavior of attending stay performances. Alexander-Brettler recalled one Prince live performance on the Discussion board the place she begged her mother to depart because it approached midnight as a result of she had work the following day. However Alexander insisted that they keep via all 4 songs in Prince’s encore, dancing all of the whereas. To shut Saturday’s memorial service, USC’s marching band carried out.
“It was the cherry on the highest,” Alexander-Brettler mentioned. “We had a celebration on the finish there.”
Alexander’s legacy lives on: In 1997, one USC alumna established the Althea Alexander Endowed Scholarship Fund to help minority medical college students. A bunch of scholars established the Althea and Fredric Alexander Scholar Assist Fund to financially help medical college students’ skilled improvement the place donations might be made in her reminiscence.
