Fifty years ago, when Alvin Poussaint, professor of psychiatry and faculty associate dean for student affairs, first arrived at Harvard Medical School, he was a relatively young man. But he had already lived more than a few lifetimes and fought more than a few battles.

A Cornell-educated physician, Poussaint had marched from Selma to Montgomery just four years before in a demonstration that became one of the nation’s pivotal civil rights protests.