Reconciling History: Celebrating Black Students Entering Medicine

Posted on September 25, 2026, TORONTO, Ontario

As the young people would say, “I was today years old” when I learned that Queen’s University once excluded Black students from its medical school.

The story recently went viral on TikTok and became the subject of considerable discussion, especially among prospective medical students holding their breath as they await that long- anticipated word:

“Congratulations!”

As another class of medical students begins its journey this fall, I find myself thinking about the Black students taking their seats in lecture halls across Canada, and the history that makes their presence particularly meaningful.

In 1918, Queen’s University Senate adopted a motion banning Black students from its School of Medicine. Although Black students were admitted again beginning in 1965, remarkably, the Senate motion remained on the books until it was formally repealed in 2018, a full century later.

For me, and perhaps for many others in the Black community who only recently discovered this history, what struck me most was not simply the racism.

It was the “century later” part.

A policy may disappear from practice, but its legacy does not necessarily disappear with it.

Black students were denied opportunities to become physicians. Careers were interrupted.

Families lost opportunities, and communities were denied the knowledge, leadership and service those physicians might have provided.

The students affected by that policy arrived at Queen’s carrying essentially the same dream as the students entering medical school today:

To become physicians.

That is precisely why this moment deserves celebration.

Black excellence in medicine is not new.

What was historically restricted was opportunity.

Queen’s has since formally apologized and taken important steps to confront this history.

Bravo.

But institutional repentance must mean more than acknowledging what happened. It should also

require us to ask:

What are we building now?

How do we move from exclusion to belonging?

From acknowledgement to opportunity?

From reconciliation to Black flourishing?

So, this fall, I want to celebrate students beginning medical school everywhere, and especially the Black students among them.

Not simply as symbols of diversity, but as the continuation of generations of Black intellectual achievement, resilience and aspiration.

Some will become the first physicians in their families. Others will become researchers, surgeons, family physicians, psychiatrists, professors and public-health leaders.

And somewhere along the way, another Black child may see them and think:

“I belong there too.”

Their presence does not erase the history.

It answers it.

So, to every student who has started, or is about to begin the extraordinary journey of medical education, whether you are walking through the doors at Queen’s, another medical school in Canada, or one elsewhere in the world, I offer a heartfelt:

Congratulations!

And to the Black students in particular:
Study boldly. Ask difficult questions. Find your mentors. Support one another. Become researchers, surgeons, family physicians, psychiatrists, public-health leaders, and whatever else you can imagine.

Perhaps years from now, another Black student will enter medical school, see you caring for patients, leading a health system, conducting research or standing at the front of a classroom and immediately understand:

I belong here too.

That, to me, is what moving from remembrance to reconciliation, and from reconciliation to Black flourishing can look like.

Dwight Townsend, LL.M., MA, BHA.
Executive Lead, Health Research Council for People of African Descent (HRCPAD)

HRCPAD is a registered charity and foundation that centres Black health research, Black-focused health data, and evidence-informed approaches to addressing health inequities affecting people of African descent.