Standing Up for Principles

Donating blood yesterday, I sat on the guerney (?) and thought that an Amherst graduate made all that possible. Dr. Charles Drew was the one responsible for blood donations, blood drives, and blood mobiles. I wonder why Drew didn't win a Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology. If I recall correctly, Drew was an undergraduate with William Hastie, the first black man appointed to a federal district court and, later, a federal appellate court. I'm not sure they were in the same class, but crossed paths certainly. Drew played football and ran track and was the class valedictorian. After graduation, to earn money for medical school, he spent time as the football coach at Morgan State University, a historically black college. With nothing to do while my blood dripped into the bag, I continued to think. Drew was not just brilliant, but very courageous, a man of principle. During the Second World War, among other positions, he was the director of the first American Red Cross blood bank which supplied blood for American and British soldiers in the war. He protested the Red Cross policy of segregating blood from blacks. Not only was "black blood" not transfused to whites, it was even stored in different places! His protests went nowhere and he resigned his position. This reminded me of the recent "sick out" by pilots of Southwest Airlines, in protest of coming company mandates for employee CoVid vaccinations. I know many people were upset by the pilots' actions. Surely they inconvenienced a lot of people, some far more so than others. To a different and, I think, lesser degree the pilots were doing what Charles Drew did--standing up for themselves, for principles, for their rights/liberties. Some might argue that lives were lost when Drew resigned, just as some people were inconvenienced by the pilots' "sick out." I do not argue either. But I would say the onus for both the lost lives and any inconvenience, no matter the seriousness, lies far more with the American Red Cross and Southwest Airlines. Each could have done the right thing. The resignation and sick-out would not have been necessary. During the American Revolution, a minority of colonists stood for independence, an even smaller number for war. Yet, as Abraham Lincoln later noted in a different scenario, "And the war came." How many people, who didn't want war, were "inconvenienced," ruined by the War for Independence? The number was considerable. Some died. Some were financially bankrupted. Their lives were turned topsy-turvy. Are we then to vilify the likes of Washington, the Adams boys, Hamilton, Frankline, etc. for "inconveniencing" or worse so many people? Standing up for principles is not easy. It often requires great sacrifice and with that comes the knowledge that other people might also face serious consequences not of their doing. I've always found this pithy saying to be trite, "You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs." Maybe this is fitting here.