Dr Vivien Thomas

A Most Expensive Estate in Greenwich

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African American Doctors: Two Movies and An Exhibit : Persistence ...

Betsy Tyson, a longtime Austin Film Society member, invited me to tour an exhibit she had curated for the Texas Medical Association – “Courage and Determination – A Portrait of Pioneering African-American Physicians in Texas.”

I spent a couple of hours looking over the photographs, letters, and documents which provide an overview of the struggles and racist opposition that 19 century African Americans faced in gaining access to medical schools, having well trained doctors, and creating hospitals which would treat people, regardless of ethnic origins. Practically any of the stories contained in the exhibit would make a powerful film. The exhibit is a sobering reminder that healthcare has always suffered from inequity in the US. The arguments over the issue today are simply the latest phase in a long war to restrict access to good, up-to-date treatment.

As the exhibit shows, right before the Civil War, there were only nine medical schools in the North which admitted students of all races. Unsurprisingly, there were none in the South. The end of the Civil War brought the establishment of 14 medical schools in the South which would educate much-needed Black physicians. Only two of those medical schools still exist today – Howard University College of Medicine (Washington, DC, 1868) and Meharry Medical College (Nashville, 1876). Between 1910-1947, those two colleges accounted for 90% of the African American medical school graduates (over 3000, including 100 women).

In 1884 among Meharry’s new crop of students was Monroe Alpheus Majors, an Austinite who had studied at Tillotson College. He became the first African American Texan to obtain a medical degree. Seeing the need for continued education and knowledge of new medical studies, Majors helped found the Lone Star State Medical Club in 1886, since county, state, and national medical associations didn’t admit Black members. But after receiving threats of lynching in 1888, Dr. Majors left Texas, only to return in 1896 to open one of the first African American hospitals in Texas (Waco).

As good as Meharry and Howard medical schools were, there was nonetheless a need and a drive to attend other medical schools. Before Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) officially ended segregation in public schools throughout America, there had already been attempts to integrate universities. Viola Johnson Coleman, with assistance from the NAACP and Thurgood Marshall, applied for admission to the Louisiana State University Medical School in 1946. She failed in her endeavor but completed her medical education at Meharry. With the memory of (cranky old) elephants, Louisiana officials had not forgotten Dr. Coleman’s suit and blocked her attempts to set up practice in her home state. Louisiana’s loss, Texas’s gain, as she found no such obstacles in opening a medical practice in Midland, Texas, where she was unquestioningly granted hospital rights, also (not a given in most cases).