What did Biloxi-style Jim Crow mean to my medical practice? It meant that I almost never saw a white patient for the first twenty-five years that I practiced. It meant that white doctors maintained separate colored waiting rooms and separate colored entrances to their offices. Jim Crow Biloxistyle meant that in 1955, when I responded to a chamber of commerce membership drive by sending in a check for thirty-six dollars, Mr. Anthony Ragusin returned my check to me in person, explaining that the Biloxi chamber just wasn’t ready for a black member—not even a black doctor. Jim Crow meant that a few local pharmacists refused to type “Mr.,” “Mrs.,” or “Miss” in front of my patients’ names on their medication containers. More seriously from a medical standpoint, Jim Crow meant that Negro patients admitted to the Biloxi Hospital were sent to the so-called annex instead of the main part of the hospital. The annex was a two-room wooden building with a brick veneer. Each room contained a four-bed ward. Regardless of their ailments or relative medical conditions, whether infectious or life threatening, men were confined in one room and women in the other. New mothers, if they were black, were confined in this exposed ward with their newborn babies. When pregnant black mothers presented themselves in labor at the hospital emergency room, they were sent to the annex rather than to any specialized labor room. This was risky. When they were ready to deliver, my mothers had to be rushed around a corner to catch an elevator to the third-floor delivery room in the main hospital complex. Many times we didn’t make it that long distance to the delivery room. The baby would be born while we waited for the elevator, or on the way up to the third floor. Newborn black babies and their mothers were sent back to the annex and were exposed to whatever illness might be in the next bed over on the ward. White babies, on the other hand, went to the nursery. No black baby went to the nursery unless it was critically ill or near death.
Almost everywhere in the country a black physician would have expected difficulty getting hospital privileges in 1955. Thankfully, I had no trouble getting hospital privileges in Biloxi. Ms. Emma Lou Ford, a white hospital administrator, was very receptive to my affiliation with the Biloxi Hospital. She had looked carefully at my record from Howard and Homer Phillips. Senior white physicians on staff respected the breadth of my training as an intern and told me that I could do any procedure that I was big enough to do and had been trained to do. While I could practice in the hospital, Jim Crowism made my status a little strange. The hospital had three categories for approved staff physicians: active, courtesy, and emeritus. Only active staff members voted in hospital staff meetings. Courtesy and emeritus staffers could attend staff meetings, but were not allowed to vote. From 1955 to 1966, I was a courtesy staff member. Medically, they would let me do anything I was big enough to do, but they would not give me the title of active staff member, not even when I completed advanced certifications. The old racial stereotypes were strong. A black doctor practicing in the hospital was astounding to white folks and even to black folks. I remember a white LPN who met me at the hospital door one day, her arms akimbo. I said, “What’s the matter?” She said, “I never saw one before.” I said, “What do you mean you never saw one?” She said, “I never saw a black doctor before.” Even the other physicians had not seen enough black doctors to feel comfortable giving me the voting rights that went with active, rather than courtesy, staff status. On the other hand, I could practice in the hospital, something no black doctor in Jackson could do at the time.
I also found fellow physicians in Biloxi—white physicians—who were willing to assist my professional development. Hospital regulations required any doctor who had not served a residency in a specialty area to do a preceptorship under a senior staff physician to gain certification to perform senior procedures in that specialty. I sought and gained certification for senior procedures in ob-gyn and surgery. In this setting I actually struck up genuine friendships with some of the white physicians—friendships that endured over the years and proved precious. Dr. Frank G. Gruich, Dr. Clay Easterly, and Dr. W. L. Sekul came to be high on that list of valued white friends. Gruich and Easterly were the specialist preceptors under whose supervision I gained senior certifications. Sekul was a pediatrician. Since I was getting hospital privileges and professional development assistance from these men, it seemed that my prayers for the opportunity to serve to my fullest capabilities were being answered. Frank Gruich and Clay Easterly documented my ob-gyn and surgical competence, covered my patients for me when I was out of town, and stuck by me courageously in the most difficult moments of the 1960s civil rights struggle.
Gruich and Easterly could and did certify my professionalism. They could not get me voting privileges on the hospital staff. Nor could they get me membership or voting privileges in the Mississippi State Medical Association or its local affiliate, the Coast Counties Medical Society. Because I, as a Negro, could not gain the status of voting member in these local or state organizations, I could not become a member of the American Medical Association. Nationally, in 1895, this absurdity in the AMA had led black physicians to organize the National Medical Association, which, though predominately black, held its membership open to all races. In Mississippi our small professional community of black physicians, dentists, and pharmacists formed the Mississippi Medical and Surgical Association. Locally, black medical professionals across the Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida gulf coasts came together in the black Gulf Coast Medical, Dental, and Pharmaceutical Association. Thus, from our own resources, we saw to it that black practitioners did not work in total isolation. Regular meetings in each of these medical groups, white or black, involved a business session, a social gathering or a dinner, and a scientific session. Our black association typically met in members’ homes, since restaurants and hotels were closed to us.
As a professional, I thought my patients deserved the benefit of my keeping up with the science available in all of these groups. I decided to apply for membership in the white Mississippi State Medical Association and its Coast Counties Medical Society affiliate. Dr. Milas Love in Gulfport also applied. Under pressure, these white organizations created the category of “scientific member” to accommodate interested black doctors, but they denied us any voting rights. They informed us that we could attend scientific sessions whenever the white state or local associations met, but we could not attend their dinners, dances, or business sessions. Dr. Love and other black physicians refused to be embarrassed or humiliated with this second-rate status and would not participate. Not me, though. My attitude was get your foot in the door. Go, see, be seen, and find out what’s going on. So every time the Mississippi State Medical Association or the Coast Counties Medical Society met, I showed up if I possibly could. As the only black physician in attendance, I was in many a lonely place.
On the coast, though, I took some comfort in my evolving friendships with white physicians. I will never forget the day in 1959 when four white doctors stood up for me as a fellow professional and a fellow human being against their own executive committee at a Coast Counties Medical Society meeting at the Biloxi Yacht Club. Because I, as a blade, was banned from meals and business sessions, I arrived and waited outside in the hallway that day, while the white voting members finished eating. The scientific session, which I was permitted to attend, was to follow the meal. Lo and behold, out comes a member of the executive committee informing me that the speaker was to be Rubel Phillips, the Republican candidate for governor, and that “Mr. Phillips said that he will not speak to an integrated audience. So, you’re going to have to leave.”
As a scientific member, I protested my eviction from this session. At about that time Dr. Frank Gruich, Dr. Charles Floyd, Dr. A. K. Martinolich, and, I believe, Dr. D. L Clippinger came to the hallway in my support. With an unpleasant scene developing in the hallway, the executive committee called me into a room. I continued to insist on my rights as a scientific member. The full wrath of the executive committee now erupted. They threatened to go after my medical license if I didn’t get out
of that place. At this point, my four white colleagues arose almost as one body in righteous indignation and said, “If you put Dr. Mason out, we go, too.” The committee threatened me so viciously that eventually I said, “Fellows, let’s go.” So we left—all five of us, one black and four courageous whites—in Mississippi, in 1959. Those gentlemen, those champions of human rights and justice, those four white physicians recognized me, a black man, as a fellow physician. In the face of humiliation and ridicule from their own colleagues, they came out with me, and I wasn’t even a voting member. I left frustrated and angry but also gratified at my friends’ support.
I kept on showing up at the local white medical society’s scientific sessions. To gain information and succeed with my patients, I could endure humiliation. I was even ready to pay double dues to learn from both the white and the black professional groups. Jim Crowism put the white medical association’s moral and professional integrity on trial, not mine. Seven years later, in March of 1966, I received an unusual and somewhat puzzling personal letter from this group summoning me to a meeting at the Pass Christian Yacht Club. I went as I was directed, and, to my surprise, I found that Dr. Milas Love was also there in response to a similar mysterious letter. A business session opened, and we were duly inducted into the formerly all-white Coast Counties Medical Society as full voting members. After eleven years of persistence, the walls came tumbling down. I was finally free to benefit from full association with other professionals on an equal basis. With this barrier removed, I followed through and joined the AMA and the formerly all-white Mississippi State Medical Association. At the same time in the Jackson area Dr. AI Britton and Dr. Robert Smith, both black physicians, were admitted into the formerly allwhite local and state medical societies. In 1972, I became the first black delegate ever elected to officially represent his local affiliate society at a meeting of the Mississippi State Medical Association.
Things were by no means perfect, but I could and did practice good medicine in Biloxi. Patients began knocking on my door in July of 1955, and they have never stopped knocking. In a small city like Biloxi, people observe a doctor. They see how many of his patients walk into the hospital and how many get carried out. By the grace of God, I didn’t lose that many. I did prenatal care and delivery, took care of neonates, did infants’ and children’s immunizations and the like. I treated infections, wired broken jaws, set fractures, and, after completing my preceptorships, did C-sections, appendectomies, and minor surgeries. I did only what I was prepared to do, but that included an array of treatments and procedures that would be unheard of for a family practitioner today. I got a reputation for being concerned and for being a pretty good baby doctor. When one of my mothers went into labor, even if I had twelve people waiting on me at the office, I would stay with that laboring mother every minute until the baby was delivered. One of my personal goals, of course, was to make an impact on Mississippi’s terrible infant mortality rate. In my first twenty-five years of practice, the period when I was delivering babies, I delivered nearly three thousand. I had some sick babies, but only one child that I delivered died in its first year of life. I attended some very sick mothers, but they all pulled through. Part of that is attributable to my educating the mothers. Part of it is due to the fact that I insisted on hospital deliveries. I strictly would not deliver babies at home. Once I did deliver a set of twins in my office, but only because we could not make it to the hospital Another part of my success is due to good consultative support from white specialists practicing in Biloxi and Gulfport. To their professional credit, no local specialist ever denied advice, consultation, or services to my patients based on race.
Of course, I kept up a steady pressure to improve conditions for my patients at the hospital. A few months after I began practicing I was working with a patient in the colored annex debriding a wound. Sometimes when I am reflecting I will look up. I looked up and noticed that pieces of the ceiling were falling. I looked down at the floor and there was nothing but bare wood. I turned to the nurses working there and said, “By God, I hadn’t noticed this before.” I went straight to the new administrator, Mr. S. E. Grimes, and requested that the hospital at least set aside two private rooms in the main building for black mothers to use after their deliveries so that the babies wouldn’t be placed on that exposed and crumbling ward in the annex. Mr. S. E. Grimes later proved to be a hard man to deal with on race issues. That’s why I started calling him SEG, a nickname that used the phonetic sounds his initials made to symbolize the pernicious principles for which he openly stood. However, this time, in 1956, Mr. S. Å Grimes conceded me the two private rooms for postdelivery black mothers and their new babies. All other black patients still went to the open wards in the annex. Separate and unequal conditions continued to exist in the hospital until we moved into a new building and changed the name to Howard Memorial in 1964. Even then, we had to fight a rearguard action against a few white staffers who still wanted to confine black patients behind the doors on the south side of the new hospital. However, we spoke up and got some principled white support So, Biloxi-style hospital Jim Crow died in 1964. From this point on, both black and white newborns went to the hospital nursery where they could be watched closely. I know that this, too, saved lives. The first black baby that I placed in that new nursery is now a Biloxi city councilman.
With Jim Crow medicine or Jim Crow anything, you made your way daily through a maze of indignities, small and large. My dad had taken out a little insurance policy for me through a company called United. When I took over paying on the policy, I found that their correspondence to me was always addressed simply to “Gilbert Mason,” without any preceding form of address such as “Mr.” or “Dr.” I wrote the company headquarters to inform them that I wished to be addressed as Dr. Gilbert Mason. To my chagrin, I received curt replies first from their state president and then from their national one, both bluntly informing me that as a Negro I would never be called “Dr.” or “Mr.” in the state of Mississippi. I immediately canceled the policy.
Sometime after Mr. S. E. Grimes took over as hospital administrator, I became aware of a directive he had sent to all departments ordering them not to put “Mr.” or “Mrs.” in front of black patients’ names on medicine labels and other paperwork. That same directive went on to order that “Mr.” and “Mrs.” be put in front of white patients’ names and that even white children should have a “little master” or “little miss” placed in front of their names. SEG had earned his nickname. Of course, I was not sent the directive, but I found out about it, and confirmed it with a white friend, Mrs. Westmoreland, who worked in the lab. Again, I went to Mr. S. E. Grimes. “Man, this is improper,” I protested. S. E. Grimes replied, “It’s something I’ve always done, something I’m doing now, and something I’m going to always do.” Old SEG could have written lines for George Wallace.
I did not stop, though. I took the “Mr.” and “Mrs.” issue to a white attorney who was on the hospital board. He seemed sympathetic, but he would give me no support. “Well,” he said, “you may be able to do that in Chicago, but you can’t do that in Mississippi. This is a Mississippi tradition. We don’t call black folks Mr. or Mrs.” I kept coming back, though. When I discovered a few local pharmacies dropping the “Mr.” or “Mrs.” from my prescriptions, I called them to protest any change made by a pharmacist to a doctor’s prescription. I brought the issue to the hospital staff. After all, I argued, if I wrote “Mr.” or “Mrs.” on a prescription and some pharmacist removed it, this was the equivalent of illegally altering the prescription. I kept on making those protest statements for some time. Then the hospital staff, my white fellow physicians, finally started working on old SEG. Eventually, SEG sent down a new edict that there would be no title whatsoever put in front of anybody’s name. This was a sort of a victory, but I wasn’t looking for a victory. I was looking for equity and respect. I sought respect for the sanctity of a black physician’s prescriptions and respect for the dignity of black pat
ients and white patients alike.
In February of 1960, at about the time that we resolved the “Mr.” or “Mrs.” issue at the hospital, Natalie and I organized the Modern Drug Store, Inc. We rented a unit on Main Street in the building that now houses the offices of lawyer Curtis Hays. I had always taken seriously Marcus Garvey’s exhortations for black entrepreneurship. Natalie and I already owned a laundromat, and the time was right to start the drugstore. We hired a young black Xavier University pharmacy graduate, Mrs. Alicia Coleman. Biloxi had not seen the likes of a blade pharmacist. On my part, this was a business decision and a principled experiment with black entrepreneurship. As with any business, its start-up involved risk. We had given the hard facts of business risk and opportunity serious consideration before we launched Modern. This being the case, I find the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission spy files very insulting in their false accusation that I organized Modern Drug Store as some kind of maladroit protest at the refusal of others to use “Mr.” or “Mrs.” on their medication labels. The timing of the opening of our pharmacy had nothing to do with the hospital’s “Mr.” or “Mrs.” controversy. I would point out that Modern’s start-up came at the end, not the beginning, of that little struggle for dignity at the hospital. And even this was by coincidence, not by design. Moreover, it was rare that any private pharmacies altered names, titles, or forms of address on my prescriptions. In reality, the drugstore was a big investment for us. We had to sell the laundromat in order to manage the pharmacy. Natalie was the president, and I was the secretary-treasurer. The pharmacy was well received. By this time, we were even allowed to join the Biloxi Chamber of Commerce. We found that some white-owned pharmacies were willing to help us when we ran short on supplies. We reciprocated when asked. So from 1960 to 1963, we successfully operated the Modern Drug Store. Unfortunately, Alicia Coleman, our pharmacist, and her husband, Emile, moved away in 1963. We chose to close Modern Drug Store, Inc., at that time in order to concentrate on other activities. At about the same time, I invested in a new, black-owned savings and loan that organized in Mobile, and Natalie’s brother helped start a black-owned bank in Virginia. All of these ventures, including the drugstore, were, in my mind, about Garveyism and black entrepreneurship, about our future—not about segregationist stupidities, as the state’s anti-civil rights spies imagined.
Beaches, Blood, and Ballots Page 7