Lemuel Julian Haywood, MD, was Professor Emeritus of Medicine at the University of Southern California and Honored Clinical Professor of Medicine at Loma Linda University. He authored or coauthored over 600 scientific publications, with a focus on hypertension, cardiac arrhythmias, sickle cell disease, and computer applications in cardiology. Notable among his many accomplishments, he established one of the first coronary care units on the west coast and led a team that developed the first computerized system for real-time heart arrhythmia detection, in 1969. He was among the first black physicians to be appointed a full professor of medicine at a majority institution.

Born in Reidsville, North Carolina, in 1927, and raised in Warrenton, North Carolina, where his father was the first and, for many years, only African American physician, he attended John R. Hawkins High School before entering the Army Specialized Training Reserve Program at Howard University (1944-45). With the conclusion of World War II, he transferred to Hampton Institute (now University) where he earned a B.S. degree with high honors in Biological Sciences, in 1948. During his time as an undergraduate, he pledged Alpha Chapter of Omega Psi Phi fraternity at Howard and introduced Greek Life to Hampton by establishing the Gamma Epsilon Chapter of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity. He returned to Howard for medical school, receiving his M.D. degree with honors in 1952.

After interning at St. Mary’s Hospital in Rochester, New York, Dr. Haywood went to Roanoke, Virginia, to begin a residency in psychiatry at the VA Hospital there, but left after the University of Virginia denied housing to him and his new bride. He instead began an internal medicine residency at Howard University’s Freedmen’s Hospital before being called to service as a Lieutenant in the US Navy Medical Corps at Bayonne, New Jersey.

He arrived at Los Angeles County General Hospital in 1956 as a second-year internal medicine resident. After a two-year year fellowship in cardiology at White Memorial Hospital, in Los Angeles, he returned to the County Hospital as a member of the Loma Linda University faculty. In 1963, he was a traveling fellow at Oxford University, under Regius Professor Sir George Pickering. Dr. Haywood received multiple honors during his long career, including membership in Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society, Distinguished Alumnus of Hampton University and Howard University, career achievement and service awards from the American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology, and American College of Physicians, and honors from the Myasnekov Institute of Russia. He helped establish and led the Sickle Cell Disease Research Foundation and was a founding member of the Association of Black Cardiologists. The Coronary Care Unit at the Los Angeles County Hospital-USC Medical Center, which he established in 1966, was renamed “The L. Julian Haywood Coronary Care Unit” in 2016. Ever mindful of his roots, Dr. Haywood donated family property to the Town of Warrenton for the establishment of the town’s first park; the HayleyHaywood Park, named to honor his father and his mother’s family’s contributions as prominent citizens, was dedicated in May 2018. In 2019, he published Cardiology at the Los Angeles County + USC Medical Center: A Personalized History. Dr. Haywood was the second youngest of six siblings and the last surviving child of the late Thomas Woodley Haywood, MD, and Louise Viola (Hayley) Haywood, a teacher in Warrenton’s local schools. He is survived by his wife of sixty-seven years, Virginia Elizabeth “Betty” (Paige) Haywood, son Julian Anthony (Tony) Haywood, several nephews, nieces, and grand nieces, and numerous cousins.