Brenda Armstrong
1949-2018
Brenda Armstrong was born in Rocky Mount, NC on January 19, 1949. Instead of attending an exclusive New England private high school, she chose to attend Rocky Mount’s segregated Booker T. Washington Senior High School. Despite the school board’s belief that none of their students would attend college, she and more than forty other students were taught college readiness courses like calculus and trigonometry, ensuring that they were prepared to take college entrance exams such as the SAT.
As a result, Dr. Armstrong entered Duke University as an undergraduate in 1966. Her class was only the third at Duke to include African Americans. In 1967, she helped to establish Duke’s Afro-American Society. While serving as the society’s President, she helped to organize the takeover of the Allen Building in 1969, which she and roughly sixty other students occupied to call attention to the needs of African-American students at Duke. These needs included the establishment of an African-American Studies Department, a black student union, protection from police harassment, and an increase in enrollment and financial support for black students.
After graduating from Duke University, she studied at the St. Louis University School of Medicine and was the only black female student for three of her four years of study. Dr. Armstrong went on to become the second African-American woman in the United States to earn a board certification in Pediatric Cardiology.
In 1979, Dr. Armstrong became a Professor in the Department of Pediatrics for the Duke University School of Medicine. When asked why she would choose to come back to Duke after her experiences as an undergraduate, she explained that she had some “unfinished business” with Duke and her desire was to make Duke live up to the greatness that she knew it had the potential to be.
In 1996, she became Associate Dean of Admissions for the School of Medicine, a position that she held for more than twenty years. During her tenure, she played a major role in diversifying the student population of the School of Medicine and is credited with recruiting the most diverse classes in the school’s history. In 2017, she was inducted into the Student National Medical Association’s Hall of Heroes.
With a focus on bringing high quality medical care to underserved populations, her clinical appointments included service as Director for numerous Pediatric clinics and laboratories in NC, as well as onsultant roles for the U.S. Military. She also coached the Durham Striders student athletes on the track field. For her contributions to the medical field, she received the National Medical Association Council on Concerns of Women Physician’s 2018 Woman of Medicine Award.
Dr. Armstrong passed away on October 7, 2018, but her legacy lives on in the expanded diversity of the Duke School of Medicine and the medical community as a whole.
Interview
Dr. Brenda Armstrong was one of the featured speakers at the “Tea with Trailblazers” event held in the Medical Center Library on February 7, 2008.