Physician Dr. Alvin Blount, Jr. was the first black surgeon in North Carolina in 1964. He joined Cone Hospital's medical staff as their institution's first black surgeon.
Prior to that, he worked at Kindred Hospital and was the first African American in North Carolina to receive certification from the American College of Abdominal Surgeons in 1957 (formerly L. Richardson Hospital). He participated in the court case Simkins v. Moses H. Cone Hospital (1963), which resulted in the desegregation of hospitals nationwide.
He was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, on February 24, 1922. Blount attended North Carolina A&T University after graduating from Raleigh's Washington High School in 1939. There, he served as the student body president and the editor of the campus newspaper before earning a B.A. in chemistry in 1943. (magna cum laude). Blount entered a government-funded program after graduation, which allowed him to enroll in the Howard University Medical School, where he studied under Dr. Charles Drew and earned his M.D. in 1947.
While attending medical school, Blount served three years on active duty in the American Army. His residency in general surgery at Kate Bittings Reynolds Memorial Hospital was completed in Winston-Salem.
Blount was enlisted in the 2nd Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) Unit of the U.S. Army Medical Corps and deployed to Korea in 1952 along with the 8225th Infantry Division from Fort Bragg. Blount later rose to the rank of captain in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, leading a team that performed 90 surgeries each week. He was appointed Chief of Surgery for the 47th U.S. Army Combat Surgical Hospital in Southeast Asia after serving as acting Chief of Surgery for the 8225th MASH Unit in Korea from 1951 to 1952. In 1954, he came back to the country.
Blount belonged to a number of associations, including the Association of Guardsmen, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity. He joined the Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity in 1970, and in 1979 he founded the Greensboro chapter of the fraternity, Beta Epsilon Boule. Blount, a 33rd degree Mason, served as the North Carolina Prince Hall Masons' Medical Director and an honorary past Grand Master. Numerous honors were bestowed upon him, including the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, which is North Carolina's highest civilian award. North Carolina A&T University conferred an honorary doctorate in humanities on Blount in 1983. He passed away in 2017.