Title:
Series: “If All Black Men Were Pacifist”
Size 24 x 36 inches
Medium: Screen print on paper using red, green, yellow, and black ink; portrait rendered in black archival Micron pen and white charcoal. 
 
 
Healing the Wounds of War and Racism
Dr. Alexander Thomas Augusta (1825–1890) was the first Black commissioned medical officer in the U.S. Army and the highest-ranking Black officer in the Civil War. Denied entry to American medical schools, he studied in Canada and returned to serve not just as a surgeon, but as a living rebuke to the white supremacist systems around him.
Augusta’s presence in military and academic spaces was often met with hostility, yet he persisted, becoming the first Black faculty member at Howard University and a powerful advocate for dignity in Black health care. His life demands we reconsider what resistance looks like: not just on the battlefield, but in the lecture hall, the hospital, and the everyday fight for equity.
 
Quote:
“I entered the service of my country to help in breaking the chains of my fellow man, and to let the nation know that the colored man had the same love of freedom as any other.”
—Dr. Alexander T. Augusta