About Our Founder
Furquan R. Stafford is the Founder and CEO of C.P. Plasma Center, Inc., in College Park, Georgia. Stafford grew up in foster homes and residential treatment centers for behavior problems. Stafford’s father was a heroin addict, and because of his addiction, he was murdered on June 6, 1972. Furquan R. Stafford was born July 6, 1972, and was raised in a low, densely populated city district occupied by a minority ethnic group linked together by economic hardship and social restrictions.
This environment is defined by neglect, mental, and emotional abuse. Furquan R. Stafford is a native son of Houston, Texas, and College Park, Georgia. Since then, Stafford has achieved remarkable success as an entrepreneur and has become a leader, a role model, and an inspiration to many young children and African origin people. Stafford’s relentless ambition to achieve and make a difference in society recognizes the need to solve common problems that hinder the young Black American population from reaching their potentials.
After graduating from Benjamin E. Banneker High School in 1991, located South of Atlanta, Georgia. Stafford began his basketball journey and collegiate medical studies in 1992 at McCook Community College in McCook, Nebraska. In rural Nebraska, McCook is a small town of eight thousand White Americans. The only Black American residents were on the basketball team at the time “eight.” Stafford became the first Black American to obtain an associate’s degree in Pre-Nursing from McCook. McCook’s President, Dr. Robert Smallfoot, called Stafford into his office to present to Stafford a book written by Marian Wright Edelman entitled: “The Measure of our Success.” After graduating from McCook in 1994, Stafford got accepted at Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas, to meet Texas’s curriculum to enter into the Nursing Progam at Praire View A&M University.
At Texas Southern, Stafford obtained a full-time job working at American Plasma Center, Inc. as a phlebotomist. This line of work experience served as the foundation for C.P. Plasma Center, Inc. After a year at Texas Southern, still employed at American Plasma, Stafford enrolled in the Paramedic program at San Jacinto College in Pasadena, Texas. In 1996, After completing the Paramedic program halfway, Stafford was carjacked and sustained a broken jar while staring down the barrow of a gun; Stafford decided to leave Houston, Texas, and move back to Atlanta, Georgia, to finish his Nursing degree at Georgia State University. He later worked as a phlebotomist, lab technician, and supervisor at Sera-Tec, Inc. Here is where Stafford understood and realized the critical importance of blood plasma to human health.
Call it relentless ambition or his willingness to sacrifice whatever was necessary to attain his goals, Stafford’s background has been unconventional. He has no shame admitting that when cash was low, he did what needed to make ends meet to get to where he needed and wanted to go. That meant using the ironing board as his desk and a milk crate as his desk chair when he had no furniture in his apartment. Since then, Stafford has dedicated his life to the systemic racism and monopoly practices in the U.S. Plasma collection industry and since been recognized as a respected researcher and fellow in the field of blood plasma.
Through his groundbreaking company C.P. Plasma Center, Inc., Furquan R. Stafford’s mission is to impact millions of lives through medicine from human plasma and economic empowerment. He has heavily invested in the blood plasma research and significantly plans to help COVID-19, sickle cell anemia, HIV/AIDs, hemophilia patients, and many other medical conditions through plasma therapies. Stafford has been instrumental in promoting plasma therapies to treat various medical and economic conditions affecting the Black American population. During the 2015-2016 Georgia General Assembly and despite reserve and much doubt for Stafford’s not a politician, he wrote a resolution encouraging the development of minority-owned plasma centers that lobbied its way through the Georgia State Senate.
On Tuesday, May 24, 2011, Furquan R. Stafford was honored by the U.S. House of Representatives for his distinguished service to the people of Georgia. According to Honorable Henry C. “Hank” Johnson, the works of Dr. Charles R. Drew have continued to be credited for medical innovation and saving of lives throughout the world. Still, Stafford has given himself a chance to continue with the work done by Dr. Charles R. Drew in promoting plasma donations through C.P. Plasma Center, Inc.
Furquan R. Stafford is a solid orator plus leader in educating and motivating the community’s youth. The Honorable Henry C. “Hank” Johnson continued to state that the State of Georgia is proud to have Stafford, who has a heart of a lion and an angel’s spirit. Furthermore, Honorable Henry C. “Hank” Johnson honored Furquan R. Stafford by proclaiming to have May 19, 2011, as a day to celebrate his achievements and remarkable work. Stafford has also been recognized in the Atlanta Daily World newspaper as a plasma pioneer. He was the chief guest speaker organized by the Atlanta 100 Black Men, Inc. and McDonald’s youth seminar.
Focus and natural ability are just a few essential elements Furquan R. Stafford believes are critical elements to realizing one’s successful entrepreneurial goals. Stafford readily states that successful entrepreneurship entails more than being good at what you do. It takes becoming a master at your craft, knowing the right people, studying information in your industry, reading books from accomplished individuals with different skill sets, and it takes impeccable timing!
I believe that Dr. Charles Drew and Dr. Vivien Thomas are guardian angels watching over me. I feel unconventionally connected to them. “There’s Life In The Blood” comes from Leviticus 17:11.”
Furquan R. Stafford
Dr. Charles Richard Drew
Father of Blood Banks
Dr. Charles R. Drew is one of the most celebrated Black American surgeons of the 20th century. He pioneered storing blood plasma methods for transfusion later on or elsewhere where the plasma was needed. Dr. Drew was responsible for creating and developing plasma supply for the first large scale plasma supply in World War II. This allowed medics in the United States Military to save thousands of lives of the Allied forces.
Dr. Charles R. Drew was born on June 3, 1904. At this time, his parents lived in Washington, DC; he was the oldest son in a family of four children. His father worked as a carpenter, and his mother was a trained teacher. Dr. Drew grew up in a middle –class environment with an interracial and a foggy bottom neighborhood. Dr. Drew studied and graduated from Dunbar High school in the year 1922. Dr. Drew proceeded to join Amherst College in Massachusetts, and he graduated in the year 1926. While in college, Dr. Drew was an outstanding athlete, which earned him special recognition from a college that was not admitting Black students.
From 1926-1928, Dr. Drew worked as a chemistry and biology professor at Morgan College in Baltimore, Maryland. He was also the first athletic director and football coach. Back then, Morgan College was a private Black college, and this is where Dr. Drew earned money to pay for his university education to study medicine. Dr. Drew joined McGill University in Montreal, Canada. At Amherst College in Amherst, Dr. Drew was initiated into Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. He affectionately wrote the poem below titled, “Omega Dear,” with Mercer Cook in honor of the fraternity:
Omega dear, we are thine own Thou art our life, our love, our home, We’ll sing thy praises far and nigh We’ll love Omega Psi Phi. To all thy precepts make us true; Live nobly as all real men do, Let manhood be our eternal shine; With faith in god and heart and mind. Through days of joy or years of pain, To serve thee e’ er will be our aim; And when we say our last goodbye, We’ll love Omega Psi Phi.”
Dr. Charles R Drew & Mercer Cook
Dr. Drew continued to receive the standard Doctor Medicine and a Master of Surgery awarded by the same institution faculty of medicine in 1933. Dr. Charles Richard Drew did his medical residency at Royal Victoria Hospital and the Montreal General Hospital. It was during this time that Dr. Charles Richard Drew interest in blood transfusion began.
Dr. Drew was first appointed as the faculty instructor for pathology at Howard University in 1935 and served for a year. He then proceeded to join Freedman’s Hospital, which was funded by the federal government and operated by Howard University. At the university, he was the instructor of surgery and an assistant surgeon. In 1938, Dr. Drew began his graduate work at Columbia University in New York City; this was after receiving a two-year Rockefeller fellowship in surgery. He then started his post-graduate career and earned a Doctor in Surgery from Columbia University. He spent time researching at Columbia’s Presbyterian Hospital, and This is where Dr. Drew gave his doctoral thesis “Banked Blood.”
Based on an exhaustive study of blood preservation techniques. In 1940, Dr. Drew earned his Doctor of Science degree and became the first Black American to attain such a milestone. During World War II, Dr. Drew was the leading authority in the field and was selected as a full-time medical director of the Britain project’s blood. He successfully organized the collection, preservation, and transportation of 14,500 pints of vital plasma for the British Army.
In 1941, Dr. Drew was appointed the first American Red Cross Blood Bank director and was responsible for the American Red Cross’s first mobile blood bank. He was in charge of blood used by both the U.S. Navy and Army Forces. During this time, Dr. Drew urged the organization to stop excluding blood from Black Americans for plasma supply networks. In 1942, the U.S. Army announced that Black American blood would be accepted but stored separately. This provoked Dr. Drew to resign from the post. He returned to Freedman’s Hospital and Howard University, a medicine professor and a surgeon from 1942-1950.
On April 1, 1950, Dr. Drew was killed in a severe automobile accident coming from a medical conference. Dr. Drew’s works in medicine, mainly blood plasma, paved the way for future research and inspired millions of Black American medical students. Mr. Furquan R. Stafford is one of the people who have followed Dr. Charles Richard Drew’s footsteps in promoting research in blood plasma.
The blood of individual human beings may differ from blood groupings, but there is absolutely no scientific basis to indicate any difference in human blood from race to race.”
Dr. Charles R. Drew
Dr. Vivien Theodore Thomas
The Black Man Who Helped Invent Heart Surgery
Dr. Vivien Theodore Thomas, a Black American, was born on August 29, 1910. He was a renowned American laboratory supervisor who developed a procedure to treat “The Blue Baby Syndrome.” Dr. Thomas was the assistant of Dr. Afred Blalock and worked at Blalock’s laboratory to conduct animal experiments at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Dr. Thomas never attended medical school, but he had a genius, a stunning dexterity. He might have been a great surgeon. Instead, he became a legend.
Dr. Thomas was born in New Iberia, Louisiana. He attended Pearl High School in Nashville in the 1920s. Dr. Thomas had hopes of joining college to study medicine and thus become a Doctor. However, the great depression could not allow him to enter college and ended up at Vanderbilt University doing carpentry in 1929. Dr. Thomas was laid off after a year; he then enrolled at Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial College as a premedical student. Dr. Thomas had no education past high school. Still, he rose from absolute poverty and racism and emerged as one of the pioneers of cardiac surgery and a teacher of operative techniques to thousands of medical surgical students. It is worth noting that Dr. Thomas taught some of the world’s prominent surgeons at John Hopkins University School of Medicine.
After the stock exchange market crash in October 1930, Dr. Thomas put his education on hold. A friend of his helped him secure a surgical research assistant position with Dr. Blalock. On his first day of work, he helped Dr. Blalock with the surgery of a dog. Within a few weeks of working with Dr. Blalock, Dr. Thomas was able to conduct animal surgery all by himself. At the time, Dr. Thomas was classified as a janitor even though he was doing postdoctoral research in the lab. In 1940, Dr. Alfred Blalock’s work was gaining prominence around America, and he was at the forefront of the best surgeons in the country. Dr. Alfred Blalock was offered a chief of surgery at John Hopkins University, and he requested that Dr. Thomas accompany him.
In 1943, Dr. Blalock was approached by a pediatric surgeon who had a problem and needed a solution to perform complex surgery to conduct a four-part heart surgery. Together, Dr. Alfred Blalock and Dr. Thomas improved a technique they had previously used in their experiments. Dr. Thomas continued with his experimental techniques that proved to be life-saving procedures in medicine. Dr. Thomas has been honored in various capacities and by distinguished medical institutions.
At John Hopkins University, he served as the surgical laboratory supervisor for 35 years. In the year 1976, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate Degree from John Hopkins University, and he was named the instructor of surgery at the John Hopkins School of Medicine. Dr. Vivien T. Thomas died of pancreatic cancer on November 26, 1985.
I work for Dr. Blalock, running this lab.”
Dr. Vivien T Thomas