Alvin Francis Poussaint, M.D. (born May 15, 1934) is an American psychiatrist well known for his research on the effects of racism 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 (1972), which looks at the effects of racism on the psychological development of blacks. Most of Poussaint's work focuses on the mental health of African Americans. Biography 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. The family was Catholic. At the 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 the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. However, in 1965 he left UCLA to become the Southern Field Director of the Medical Committee for Human Rights in Jackson, Mississippi. Poussaint 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