Harvard Psychiatrist to Receive NAACP Medgar Evers Award

Dr. Alvin F. Poussaint, a psychiatrist on the faculty at Harvard Medical School, will receive the Medgar Evers Medal of Honor at the annual Medgar Evers Community Service Award luncheon of the Beverly Hills/Hollywood chapter of the NAACP Friday at the Hollywood Roosevelt. He will speak on “The State of the Psyche in Black America,” at the awards.

Poussaint, author of “Why Blacks Kill Blacks,” and co-author of “Black Child Care,” worked with the Medical Committee for Human Rights in Jackson, Miss., during the mid-1960s, providing medical care to civil rights workers and helping to desegregate health facilities in the the South.

Currently he serves as script consultant to NBC’s “The Cosby Show,” and “A Different World,” is a senior associate of the Judge Baker Children’s Center in Boston where he does research on grief and loss, and is both associate professor of psychiatry and associate dean for student affairs at Harvard.

The Medgar Evers Awards, named for the slain civil rights leader, honor outstanding individuals whose ongoing contribution to the quality of life for all minorities has been unparalleled. Former awardee Bill Cosby has been asked to make the presentation to Poussaint.

Tickets for the event, which starts at 11:30 a.m., are on sale through the NAACP, at $60 and $100, with proceeds going to organization’s student ACT-SO program.

Information: (213) 464-7616.