Today, people still use his wisdom and ideas based on civil rights activism to make medical schools more representative of the diversity of the human race.

Reverend Abernathy served as a leader in civil rights and worked diligently with Martin Luther King Jr.[1] Watkins was the valedictorian of his class at Alabama State Laboratory High School.

Afterward, he attended the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and became the first African American to obtain a medical degree from that institution.

[11] He was named a professor of cardiac surgery in 1991, and concurrently held the post of Associate Dean of the School of Medicine until his retirement in 2013.

[1] Watkins left Johns Hopkins in 1973 for Harvard University where he researched the use of angiotensin blockers in cases of congestive heart failure until 1975.

Angiotensin blockers were created in order to avoid the side effects of ACE inhibitors, which were previously the drug of choice for lowering blood pressure and treating congestive heart failure.

His research clearly paid off, as this drug is still used today in patients that cannot tolerate ACE inhibitors to treat their congestive heart failure.

[1] From that point on, he became invested in the civil rights movement, and spent the rest of his life fighting for other fellow African Americans and other minorities who were struggling in their advance in the medical field.

[1] Later in his life, he was selected to serve on the admissions board at Johns Hopkins University where he spent his last years making the school more fair to all ethnicities, especially minorities.

Hildreth was the dean of the College of Biological Sciences at UC Davis and is also an immunologist who spent much of his career helping with AIDS research.

In addition, his work on angiotensin blockers has helped many patients in need of treatment for congestive heart failure, even those who are unable to tolerate other drugs.