As an assistant dean of variety and inclusion at USC, Dr. Althea Alexander hung out talking in highschool school rooms throughout the USA, seeking undeveloped expertise amongst Black and brown college students in hopes of guiding them towards the sphere of drugs.
She mentored minority medical college students and sought to enhance the college’s efforts to recruit numerous college students. Her work, spanning 5 a long time, paid off tenfold: She influenced the profession paths of lots of who would go on to turn into medical college deans, chief executives and even California’s surgeon normal.
Alexander, 89, died on July 17 after struggling a mind hemorrhage, in line 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 stated.
“It’s not something she needed to follow,” Alexander-Brettler stated. “It got here from her soul. It got here very naturally for her to offer.”
Alexander arrived at USC in 1968, changing into the primary feminine and Black college member. On the time, there was one Black and one Latino medical scholar enrolled. Alexander sought to alter that. USC estimates that she influenced the lives of a minimum of 800 minority college students on the Keck College of Drugs by her retirement in 2019.
In 1969, she grew to become the inaugural dean of Minority Affairs, which might later turn into the Workplace of Range and Inclusion. In 1992, she advised The Occasions that she believed college students of coloration had been by no means advised that they’d the intelligence, functionality or sensitivity to turn into docs, and she or he needed to instill that in them as early as she might.
She spoke at excessive faculties and inspired college students to communicate. She promised the scholars and their households that in the event that they put within the work, she would assist them as finest as she might to seek out them a spot in a medical college.
“We’ve to coach younger individuals to make a contribution to society,” she advised The Occasions. “If somebody would give us a grant to start out in kindergarten, I’d 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 needed to be a health care provider. He launched her to his spouse, an assistant dean at USC’s medical college, and from then on, Althea grew to become a guiding drive for Ramos, who was born in South Central and the primary in her household to go to varsity. Ramos graduated from USC’s medical college in 1994.
“Every time I used to be wanting to surrender or simply wanted a bit of pep discuss, she was all the time there,” stated Ramos, who grew to become California’s surgeon normal in 2022. When Ramos took on the position with lingering emotions of inadequacy, Alexander quelled these doubts and advised her she was match for the job. “In fact,” her mentor advised her. “Why not you?”
At USC, Alexander pushed admissions to contemplate non-traditional experiences along with grades and check scores, equivalent to contemplating an applicant’s work and household historical past. She and her household hosted dozens of scholars, usually for months at a time, of their residence. Alexander helped others pay hire and acquired automobiles for many who couldn’t afford them so they may attend college, Alexander-Brettler stated.
Alexander had a nationwide and worldwide affect as nicely, with lots of the college students at USC happening to check throughout the nation. At a memorial service held Saturday, the place former college students shared tales of her influence on their lives, audio system shared how Alexander inspired them to come back to the U.S. from China to increase their medical schooling.
She didn’t shrink back about talking bluntly about racism within the medical area. She beforehand advised The Occasions about an occasion when she went to the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Heart to hunt support after breaking her arm. A white attending resident advised her to “maintain your arm such as you often maintain your can of beer on Saturday night time.”
“What are you speaking about?” she demanded. “Do you suppose I’m a welfare mom?”
She advised college students that they might absolutely confront the identical points.
“This isn’t a utopia,” Alexander would say. “You might be what you might be. … You can’t die on each hill right here. If any person makes a racist remark at school, you can not spend all of your power on that. Be principled and cope with it. Say: ‘I don’t respect that.’ Then, transfer on.”
She shared a ardour for civil rights advocacy, becoming a member of protesters in the course of the East L.A. protests in 1970, and had a United Farm Employees flag hanging in her workplace signed by Cesar Chavez.
Alexander had recognized 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 liked music and made a behavior of attending dwell 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 by way of 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 stated. “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 assist minority medical college students. A bunch of scholars established the Althea and Fredric Alexander Scholar Help Fund to financially assist medical college students’ skilled growth the place donations could be made in her reminiscence.
