Page 8 - Emory TFD Society BHM '21

Lasting Legacy
Jeroson Williams, M.D.
In a 1979 interview with the Washington Post, Dr. Lasalle Leffall, was quoted as stating that he “often wondered of the price of courage”. He had witnessed the tribulations of Muhammad Ali, who just years earlier, defiantly, in the face of near professional ruin, refused to be drafted for the Vietnam War. His defiance was based on principled matters of religion and race. Leffall went on doubt if he possessed the courage to be as Ali was. At the time of his comments, Dr. Leffall had already
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Black History Month 2021 I Surgeon Highlight
established a reputation as a daring giant of surgical oncology and was also the president of the American Cancer Society. Not only had he achieved great professional merit, he served honorably as a Captain in the US Army during World War II, and survived boyhood in the Jim Crow south.
In a time where surgeons were often known, even revered, for brash and quick temperedness, Dr. Leffall was a mild- mannered man. Known to his junior colleagues for listening, providing insightful and decisive advice and commentary. The surgeon, whose intellectual ability was ever on display, routinely thinking aloud in fluent