Granville C. Coggs

Instead, Coggs selected Harvard University Medical School in honor of his childhood mentor, prominent African American physician George William Stanley Ish (1883–1970), a member of Harvard Medical School's Class of 1909.

Ish inspired the 1918 founding of the now-defunct J. E. Bush Memorial Hospital in Little Rock, Arkansas and the defunct McRae Memorial Tuberculosis Sanatorium for African Americans.

During his tenure in Massachusetts, Coggs shared a residential suite with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was working on his PhD in divinity at Boston University.

Granville C. Coggs (July 30, 1925 – May 6, 2019) was an American medical doctor, radiologist, U.S. Army Air Force/U.S. Air Force/U.S. Air Force Reserves officer, and trained bombardier pilot with the 477th Bombardment Group attached to the famed Tuskegee Airmen.

He was one of the 1007 documented Tuskegee Airmen Pilots.

Coggs was born July 30, 1925, in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

The grandson of enslaved African Americans, Coggs was the youngest of five siblings.

He was the son of Dr. Tandy Washington Coggs, an educator, and Nannie Hinkle Coggs, a teacher.

Tandy served as the First Superintendent of the now-defunct Arkansas Negro Boys' Industrial School, a juvenile correctional facility for African American male youth in Arkansas.

After training at Tyndall Field in Florida for Aerial Gunnery Training, he served as an aerial gunner, aerial bombardier, multi-engine pilot, and B-25 pilot trainee with the 477th Bombardment group.

In 1937, Tandy moved his family from Pine Bluff, Arkansas to Little Rock, Arkansas in Pulaski County to serve as President of Arkansas Baptist College, a position he held until 1955.

Coggs transferred to Dunbar High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, graduating in 1942.

Though he took some classes at his father's Arkansas Baptist College, Coggs enrolled at Howard University in Fall 1943.

On December 18, 1943, Coggs enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Force as a Private at Camp Robertson in Little Rock, Arkansas December 18.

The U.S. Army Air Force stationed Coggs at Keesler Air Force Base near racially segregated Biloxi, Mississippi for six weeks.

After training, Coggs was transferred to Tuskegee Institute for college training.

Coggs' aptitude test qualified him to train as a flying officer, bombardier, navigator or pilot.

In January 1945, Coggs received a commission as a second lieutenant.

On October 16, 1945, Coggs graduated from Cadet Class TE-45-G, Twin Engine Section, receiving a commission as 2nd lieutenant bombardier pilot He received bombardier training at Midland Army Airfield in Midland, Texas, and served as a weather observer at Tuskegee Institute until he was honorably discharged from the U.S. Army Air Corps Fall 1946.

The 477th Bombardment group did not engage in combat during World War II, which ended before Coggs completed training.

Coggs was a Spring 1948 initiate of the Eta Chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity at the University of Nebraska.

In June 1949, Coggs graduated with a bachelor's degree with distinction from the University of Nebraska.

He finished within three years and in the top 3% of his senior class.

At the time, Coggs' 91.65 academic average was the highest average ever achieved by an African American student at the University of Nebraska.

Coggs was elected to several honor societies including Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Xi, Phi Lambda Upsilon, the Honorary Chemistry Society, and Theta Nu Honorary Pre-Medical Fraternity.

In 1949, Coggs enrolled at Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

He was the sole African American in his first-year medical school class.

Coggs financed his education with a $500 grant from the GI bill and a $330 scholarship from Harvard Medical School.

Coggs applied to several top medical schools.

He was accepted to the University of Southern California's medical school which never enrolled an African American medical student prior to Coggs' application.

After graduating with a M.D. from Harvard Medical School in June 1953, Coggs returned to the U.S. Air Force as a Medical Intern.

Coggs became a radiologist and breast cancer specialist.

In 1958, he completed a three-year medical residency in radiology at the University of California, San Francisco.

In 1959, Coggs was the first African American to serve as a staff physician at the Kaiser Hospital in San Francisco, California.

In 1959, Coggs was the first African American to serve as a staff physician at the Kaiser Hospital in San Francisco, California as a full-time Associate Clinical Professor of Radiology.

In 1969, Coggs received the National Medical Association's Silver Medal Award for his scientific exhibit, “Non-Surgical Diagnosis and Treatment of Renal Cysts.” His exhibit also received an honorable mention at the 1970 American Medical Association's annual meeting in Chicago, Illinois.

In 1972, he became the first African American to lead University of California at San Francisco's Ultrasound Radiology Division.

In 1972, he became the first African American to lead University of California at San Francisco's Ultrasound Radiology Division.

In 1975, Coggs became a tenured professor of radiology at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, Texas.

In 1985, Coggs retired from the U.S. Air Force Medical Reserve with the rank of lieutenant colonel.