As part of a series as a guest editor of the Cancer History Project to commemorate the 1964 Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health, Alan Blum speaks with Louis Sullivan, who was Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from 1989 to 1993.

Alan Blum is professor and Gerald Leon Wallace M.D. Endowed Chair in Family Medicine at the University of Alabama, as well as the director of the Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society.

Throughout his career, Sullivan made smoking prevention a high priority, condemning the tobacco industry for targeting African Americans and calling on sports organizations to reject tobacco sponsorship.

In 1975, Sullivan was named founding dean and director of the Medical Education Program at Morehouse College. In 1981, the four-year Morehouse School of Medicine was established with Sullivan as dean and president.

In this interview, Sullivan speaks about growing up in the segregated South, his early years in medicine while living in Boston, and the medical community’s response to tobacco in the aftermath of the 1964 surgeon general’s report.

Read more and access the transcript on the Cancer History Project: https://cancerhistoryproject.com/article/former-hhs-secretary-louis-sullivan-recalls-sinking-rjrs-uptown-a-menthol-brand-for-black-smokers/