American Experience · SEASON 15
Partners of the Heart
Episode 8 · 2003-02-10
- Documentary
Episode overview
Chronicling the unlikely partnership between a white surgeon and a black "technician" that led to a procedure to correct blue-baby syndrome in 1944. The principals: Vivien Thomas, a black man with only a high-school diploma, and Alfred Blalock, the patrician chief of surgery at Johns Hopkins. Blalock pioneered the surgery to correct the congenital heart defect, but it was Thomas who devised to procedures that were used. And they did it at a time, narrator Morgan Freeman says, when the two "could not share the same lunch table in the Hopkins cafeteria."
55 minutes
Season 15 episodes
1. Jimmy Carter (1): Jimmy Who?2002-11-11
2. Jimmy Carter (2): Hostage2002-11-12
3. Chicago: City of the Century (1): Mudhole to Metropolis2003-01-13
4. Chicago: City of the Century (2): The Revolution Has Begun2003-01-14
5. Chicago: City of the Century (3): Battle for Chicago2003-01-15
6. The Murder of Emmett Till2003-01-20
7. Transcontinental Railroad2003-01-27
8. Partners of the Heart2003-02-10
9. The Pill2003-02-24
10. Daughter from Danang2003-04-07
11. Seabiscuit2003-04-21
12. Bataan Rescue2003-07-07
13. Murder at Harvard2003-07-14
