The Bone Doctor’s Concerto

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The story of one of Cincinnati’s most influential leaders in medicine.  
Born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1939, Dr. Alvin Crawford grew up and attended medical school in a segregated world. Beginning with his early life in Orange Mound—a self-contained community for freed slaves established in the 1890s—Crawford’s autobiography describes his flirtation with a music degree and time spent playing in jazz bands through the segregated South. In 1960, Crawford began his ground-breaking medical career with his entrance into the University of Tennessee College of Medicine, becoming the school’s first African American student. After completing his medical training and traveling the world as a surgeon for the Navy, Crawford found himself in Cincinnati, where he established the Comprehensive Pediatric Orthopedic Clinic at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, the first in the region.
 
Underlying this story are the systemic and very personal incidents of racism Crawford experienced throughout his career. His autobiography is a personal account of segregation, integration, ambition, hard work, and taking risks. Alvin Crawford is professor emeritus at UC Health with more than 35 years of clinical experience in diagnosis and treatment in orthopedics. He is the recently retired founding director of the Crawford Spine Center at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and a renowned expert in spinal deformities and neurofibromatosis, a genetic disorder often associated with scoliosis. He is the first Black president of the Scoliosis Research Society and has been recognized in “America’s Best Doctors” since 1996.

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