Bruce Oliver Tucker (1913-1968)

Bruce Tucker, an African American man and oldest son of Spencer and Emma Tucker, grew up near here and is buried at Little Bethel Church. On 24 May 1968, Tucker suffered a head injury from a fall. Physicians at the Medical College of VA (later VCU Health) declared him dead on 25 May. Without the consent or knowledge of Tucker’s family, surgeons removed his heart and kidneys with a medical examiner’s permission and placed his heart into a White man in VA’s first, and the world’s 16th, cardiac transplant. Tucker’s brother William filed a wrongful-death lawsuit; the jury, instructed to consider the concept of brain death despite its absence from the Code of VA, found for the defendants in 1972.

Department of Historic Resources, 2024