Brian H. Williams

Brian H. Williams was the trauma surgeon on call at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas on the night of July 7, 2016, when a sniper opened fire on police officers guarding a protest march. The wounded officers reached Parkland within minutes; five of them did not survive. In interviews the following week, Williams described the night's work and what it left behind. "It has to stop," he told NBC News. He also spoke about the irony of his position: a Black surgeon who had spent years treating gunshot victims now fighting to save officers sent to guard the march.

The road to that operating room ran through the Air Force. Williams graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy with a degree in aeronautical engineering and military honors, then served six years as a commissioned officer working as an aeronautical engineer. He entered medicine afterward, earning his medical degree at the University of South Florida. His surgical training included an internship and residency at Brigham and Women's Hospital and a fellowship in trauma surgery and surgical critical care at Emory University's Grady Memorial Hospital, one of the country's busiest trauma centers.

After the ambush, reporters and audiences wanted to hear from the surgeon who had treated the officers. In December 2016, he visited Oregon Health and Science University and discussed his experience caring for the officers and confronting racism as a Black man.

His work has extended to teaching and public policy. At the University of Chicago, he guided graduate students examining gun violence. His book, The Bodies Keep Coming: Dispatches from a Black Trauma Surgeon on Racism, Violence, and How We Heal, was published on September 26, 2023. In it, he examines how gun violence and structural racism intersect in American health care, an argument built from his years treating gunshot wounds, stabbings and traumatic brain injuries. The Association of American Medical Colleges published an excerpt in which he reflected on the epidemic of gun violence he had spent his career treating. He has discussed the book in public forums, including a City Club of Cleveland event in December 2024.

He now practices and teaches in Chicago, where his work pairs the operating room with research and teaching on gun violence and health.