Lloyd C. Elam

Lloyd Charles Elam (October 27, 1928 - October 4, 2008) was an American psychiatrist who served as president of Meharry Medical College from 1968 to 1981. Before assuming the presidency at Meharry, Elam was the first black person to earn a medical degree from the University of Washington School of Medicine and he established Meharry's psychiatry department and psychiatric residency program.

Early life

Elam was born in Little Rock, Arkansas. His father was a carpenter, and his mother insisted that the family walk to their destinations rather than riding segregated city transportation. Elam was 15 when he graduated from Dunbar High School. By the age of 17, he was the Sunday school superintendent at his church.

After attending a local junior college, he moved to Illinois, where he worked at an automotive plant and took classes at Roosevelt University. Graduating from Roosevelt in 1950, Elam served in the U.S. Army and then went to medical school at the University of Washington School of Medicine. When he graduated in 1957, he was the school's first black medical graduate.

Career

Elam completed an internship and psychiatry residency in Chicago, after which he joined the psychiatry staff at Chicago's Billings Hospital. In 1961, Elam became an assistant professor at Meharry Medical College and founded its psychiatry department. He started the psychiatry residency at Meharry and created one of the first psychiatric day treatment programs in Nashville. Before becoming Meharry's president in 1968, Elam was the psychiatry department chairman and the interim medical school dean.

During his presidency, Meharry implemented an $88 million capital campaign, adding new towers to the school's teaching facility (George W. Hubbard Hospital) and constructing several other buildings. Meharry also established a graduate school for public health, biochemistry and other health-related fields. Subsequent president Wayne Riley later described Elam as "the president who really built the modern-day Meharry." In the early 1970s, Elam was elected to the board of directors of Kraftco, and he later served on the boards of Merck & Co. and BellSouth Telecommunications.

In 1981, with Meharry and the George W. Hubbard Hospital facing serious financial difficulties, the school's board of directors dismissed Elam as president and named him chancellor. Several years earlier, Elam wanted to step down as president but the board had asked him to stay. The New York Times said that Elam did not want to give up his role at the time of his 1981 dismissal. Elam was replaced on an interim basis by radiologist Richard G. Lester of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, and the move generated controversy because Lester was the first white president in the school's history.

Elam was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in 1982. The same year, he became a Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Meharry, and he served in that capacity until 1995, when he became volunteer faculty at the school. He became an emeritus professor in 1996. Elam received an honorary doctorate from Harvard University, and in 1988 he received the Eleanor Roosevelt Key, which is the highest honor bestowed upon alumni of Roosevelt University.

Death and legacy

Meharry's Lloyd C. Elam Mental Health Center provides psychiatric services and substance abuse treatment. He died while on a trip to Mississippi in 2008. Elam and his wife Clara had two children.