Dr. Harold Dadford West, Sr.

Harold Dadford West was born in Flemington, New Jersey, in 1904 and built his career as a biochemist. He is credited as the first person to synthesize threonine, one of the amino acids. Meharry, which he later led, had opened in 1876 with nine students as the first medical school for African Americans in the South. West married Jessie Juanita West, had at least two children and died in Nashville on March 5, 1974, aged 69. A 1976 article about him in the Journal of the National Medical Association was titled a good man and true.

What the plaque says

Dr. Harold Dadford West, Sr. In 1927, Dr. West came to Meharry Medical College as Associate Professor of Chemistry. A 1930 Julius Rosenwald Fellowship Recipient and a 1935 Fellow of the General Education Board, he returned to Meharry to serve as the first Ph. D on faculty as Professor and Chairman of the Biochemistry Department. In 1952, Dr. West was elected Meharry's first Black American President. At that time, more than 50 percent of the Black American physicians and dentists practicing in the U.S. were Meharry Medical College graduates. Dr. West resigned from the presidency in 1966 and continued his research, teaching, and writing until his death in 1974.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fisk University and Jubilee Hall — 0.3 mi
  The 1866 school for freed people whose Jubilee Singers paid for Jubilee Hall, a National Historic Landmark, and whose students helped start Nashville's sit-ins.
• Tennessee State Capitol — 1.4 mi
  William Strickland's Greek Revival capitol on Nashville's Capitol Hill, finished in 1859 and built from the bottom up with the labor of enslaved men.
• Civil Rights Room at the Nashville Public Library — 1.6 mi
  A room in the downtown library with a circular lunch counter, a timeline and oral histories of the 1960 Nashville sit-ins, a few blocks from the stores where they began.
• National Museum of African American Music — 1.8 mi
  A downtown Nashville museum, opened in 2021, tracing gospel, blues, jazz, rhythm and blues and hip-hop through Black history from 1619 to 2016.

More markers nearby

• Bombing of the Z. Alexander Looby Home — steps away
• Citizens Savings Bank and Trust Company — steps away
• Jefferson Street Music District — steps away
• Desegregating Nashville's Lunch Counters — 0.2 mi