Reflections of a Grady Doctor: civil rights movement

Segregated Grady Hospital during the Civil Rights era (aka "The Gradys")

Today is January 15, 2012. My name is Kimberly D. Manning and I am a medical doctor. I received my medical degree from Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee. For the past ten years, I have had the honor of teaching Emory University medical students and training Internal Medicine resident physicians at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia.

And I am a black female.

Fifty years ago today the date was January 15, 1962. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was somewhere blowing out thirty three candles on his birthday cake. During that time, the vast majority of black physicians in the United States were educated at either Meharry Medical College or Howard University School of Medicine--both historically black institutions. In January of 1962 more than a quarter of the population in Atlanta, Georgia was black.

And Grady Hospital was segregated.

"White" Grady and "Colored" Grady. Known by most during those times as "The Gradys"; this plurality serving as the perfect descriptor for these separate but not-so-equal hospitals within one hospital. Yes, in 1962, Grady hospital was segregated.

Fifty years ago today.

Not only segregated. On January 15, 1962, there were no black physicians with staff privileges there. None. As a matter of fact, during that time there were approximately 4,000 hospital beds at hospitals in the Atlanta area. But physicians who looked like me could only practice in less than 500 of them. 438 to be exact.

Fifty years ago today.

If an African-American patient that I cared for as a primary care provider was hospitalized fifty years ago today, yes, they could be admitted at Grady. However, I would have to give up all patient care privileges at the moment they hit the door. Because, you see, while black people could receive care on the segregated C and D wings of the hospital, they could not receive that care from physicians of their same race.

No, they could not.

In January of 1962 there were groups picketing in front of Grady Hospital. Groups like COAHR and others in the community inspired by a thirty-three year old preacher who had become the face of the Civil Rights Movement. The same preacher who preached around the corner from Grady Hospital at Ebenezer Baptist Church. So there they stood. The Committee for the Appeal for Human Rights withstanding hateful stares and venomous words. Young people bravely holding up signs criticizing the inequity of the care offered to "negro" patients at Grady Hospital -- and also the fact that black physicians weren't allowed there.

Fifty years ago today.

Other than it being just wrong, there were other problems with that whole no-black-doctors thing. See, just like it is now, Grady was the hospital that served the indigent patient population in Atlanta. And just like now, many of those patients were black. With segregation like it was, many of those folks were cared for by black physicians in the community. And back then, your primary doctor was usually who cared for you in the hospital, too.

Unless, of course, you needed to be admitted at Grady. Regardless of your wishes, that nice black doctor of yours would likely have been called a "boy" and sent on his way.

Or "gal" or "nigra" had it been me.

Fifty years ago today.

I guess it was good that there was at least the "colored" Grady. I mean, it could have been worse. In addition to Grady, at least there was Hughes Spalding Hospital (the colored hospital) across the street. Across the street. Yeah. So fifty years ago today, your negro doctor caring for you across the street from Grady couldn't come to care for you there. No, he or she could not. Oh, and if you weren't poor enough to be considered "indigent"? That made it even more complicated.

All that was going on on this day in 1962.

In January of 1962, my father was a freshman in college at Tuskegee Institute. He had graduated from high school in Birmingham, Alabama that previous year and, like many black folks back then, was the first person in his family to go to college. But also like many black folks back then, he wasn't the first smart person in his family.

No, he was not.

My paternal grandmother valued education. She celebrated my father for his academic achievements and applauded his decision to get higher education. Like me, my father excelled at science and things involving interpersonal skills. He enthusiastically told his counselor in 1961 that he wanted to major in Biology and go to medical school. Unfortunately, that counselor discouraged him. Shot down that dream quick, fast and in a hurry telling him that it was too much of a gamble. If a black man is going to go to college and he wants a job, he needs to go get an engineering degree. And let go of this pipe dream of being a doctor.

"What if you don't get into medical school? Then what?"

Going to college was already a big deal. And it wasn't like there was a doctor in the family for him to call for advice or to counter with, "But what if you do get in, son? What if you do?"

Yep.

So fifty years ago today, on January 15, 1962, my gifted-in-science father was struggling in math and engineering classes at Tuskegee Institute where it would take him more than six years to graduate. Because that's where the world was back then. Race and gender clearly dictated decisions and created ceilings made of a hell of a lot more than glass.

Me? I chose to go to Meharry Medical College because it was a good fit for me. Not because there was no other option or other place willing to let me fit. But had I thought of medical school on January 15, 1962, my medical education story would be different. It would have been Meharry or Howard or bust.

Or perhaps, for a woman, nothing at all.

Fifty years ago today.

Today I'm reflecting on how far things have come on what would have been Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s eighty-third birthday. I am imaging a life for me in his world, a life at Grady Hospital some fifty years ago. And what I am realizing is that I wouldn't have had any kind of life there. At least, not as a doctor. And damn sure not as a teaching physician at Emory.

Oh, did I forget to mention? 1962 was also the first year Emory University integrated its student body. 1963 marked the admission of the first black student in Emory's School of Medicine-- a young man named Hamilton E. Holmes. As for the faculty part, I'm not sure when that part fully changed. I do know that Dr. Asa Yancy Sr. was the first brother-faculty member appointed at Emory which technically took place in the late 1950's (even though he still couldn't get privileges at Grady.) Something tells me that it probably took a little more time to get some sister-doctors on the roster.

But that's just my guess.

So yeah. A lot has gone down in fifty years. So instead of posting the "I Have a Dream" speech or even discussing some of the annoying criticisms that have come up about Dr. King after his death or talking about President Obama or even ranting about how black history should be discussed in more than just the winter months . . . .I am simply sitting here quietly feeling thankful. Thankful that I am right here right now and not fifty years ago today.

And even more thankful that people like Dr. King and my daddy were there.

Sometimes I feel angry that the doors open to me were shut in my father's face. But when I see how proud he and my mother are of their children and what we have become, I feel a little better. And when I listen to his stories of growing up poor, black, and one of eleven children in the epicenter of the Jim Crow era--and I see what he has become--I feel proud, too.

Proud. Proud of where I can go and what I can do. Thanks to all of them taking a whole lot for the team some fifty years ago today.

Kind of makes me wonder what I'm doing for the team.

Hmmm.

See? This Civil Rights thing was more than just a notion. A whole lot more. Me? I get to be a Grady doctor. And no, not in the figurative sense--in the literal sense. I literally get to be a Grady doctor because somebody wasn't afraid to be spit at and hosed down and hit across the head with a brick. I get to be a Grady doctor because some surely terrified individuals put themselves in harm's way on Freedom riders' buses and some peaceful young person in my own father's neighborhood got attacked by German shepherds just for standing up. Because of them I get to be where I am right now. A doctor. At Grady.

Man.

So to all who lived through it, I say thank you. For every time you had to stand there and hear someone call your grown-ass father a boy or a nigger or your beloved matriarch a gal or a nigra, thank you. To those who bravely went against the grain when it would have been much easier to hunker down in some false sense of pink superiority, thank you, too. Because I know that there was a lot more moving in that movement than just black folks.

Yes, there were.