Alvin Poussaint

Alvin Francis Poussaint
Born	May 15, 1934 East Harlem, New York
Nationality	African American
Fields	Psychiatry
Institutions	Harvard Medical School
Alma mater	B.S. Columbia University M.D. Cornell University
Known for	The Cosby Show Consultant

Alvin Francis Poussaint, M. D. is an American psychiatrist well known for his research on racisms' effect in the black community. He is a noted author, public- speaker, and television consultant, and Dean of Students at Harvard Medical School. His work in psychiatry is influenced greatly by the civil rights movement in the South, which he joined in 1965. While living in the south, Pouissant learned much about the racial dynamics. He soon delved into his first book, Why Blacks Kill Blacks, which looks at the effects of racism on the psychological development of blacks. Most of Pouissant’s work focuses on the mental health of African Americans.

Alvin Francis Poussaint was born on May 15, 1934 in East Harlem, New York to immigrants from Haiti. He is the seventh child of eight children born to the parents of Harriet and Christopher Poussaint. At the young age of nine, he became ill with rheumatic fever. While being hospitalized, he became very interested in reading and it soon became a passion of his. He carried this passion with him when he attended the science based high school in New York called Stuyvesant. Stuyvesant was a predominately white institution. Pouissant was one of the few blacks and he encountered racism often. In addition to racist acts against him, he had to deal with losing his mother during high school.

After high school, Poussaint attended Columbia University, where he continued to experience racism. At Columbia, the social scene was particularly disappointing for Poussaint, with him saying, “Social situations were awkward, there being a prevalent feeling among whites that blacks shouldn't come to social events.” In 1956, he graduated from Columbia University with a bachelor’s degree in pharmacology. He immediately enrolled in medical school at Cornell Medical School, and he was the only African American admitted during that year. Experiences with racism fueled his career areas of work which focused on the mental health of African Americans and their encounters with racial bias. He became chief resident at UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute. However, in 1965 he left UCLA to become the Southern Field Director of the Medical Committee for Human Rights in Jackson, Mississippi. Poussant believed that racism was the major mental health problem of the black community. He believed helping desegregate the South, especially with medical facilities would be more helpful than doing research at the time.

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