A White Dean and Black Physicians at the Epicenter of the Civil Rights Movement

Abstract

Robert Q. Marston, MD, a gregarious Rhodes and Markel Scholar, native Virginian, and well-connected National Institutes of Health-trained medical scientist found himself the new dean and hospital director of a promising academic medical center at age 38. It was 1961 and the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) in Jackson was, unknown to him, about to be at the geographic center of the struggle for African American civil rights. That struggle would entangle UMMC in a national search for social justice and change the course of American history and American medicine. Shortly after his arrival, the new dean received and refused a written request from the Secretary of the Mississippi Chapter of the National Medical Association (NMA) to make educational venues at the segregated medical center available to black physicians. The same year, UMMC became the primary medical provider for sick and injured Freedom Riders, sit-in and demonstration participants, and others who breached the racial divide defined by the state's feared Sovereignty Commission. That divide was violently enforced by collaboration among law enforcement, Citizens' Councils, and the Ku Klux Klan. The crescendo of the civil rights struggle that attended Marston's arrival included a deadly riot following James Meredith's integration of the Ole Miss campus in Oxford in 1962, the death of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Field Secretary Medgar Evers at UMMC in 1963, a national controversy over UMMC's role in the autopsies of 3 civil rights workers murdered in Neshoba County, an attempt at limited compliance to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and a federal civil rights complaint against UMMC by the NAACP Legal and Educational Fund in 1965. That complaint noted that UMMC was out of compliance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and seriously threatened its federal funding and academic operations. Marston developed a compliance strategy that included the hiring of the first black faculty member, a request for an immediate federal civil rights inspection, and secretive overnight integration of the hospitals and clinics. A key to his strategy was engagement of support from the black community, with whom he had previously developed no relationship. Marston asked NAACP Field Director Charles Evers for support, and met with 5 black Mississippi physicians. Among the 5 was Robert Smith, MD, a founding member of the Medical Committee for Human Rights, the NMA officer whose request for NMA membership-access to the medical center was ignored. He was unaware of their local and national civil rights roles and active dialogue with the federal government on implementation of Title VI. The desire of the black physicians to see UMMC become an equal opportunity health resource resulted in their quiet assistance that aided UMMC compliance initiatives and played a major role in the successful outcome of the 1965 investigation of the charges of Title VI violations. This success established Marston as a national figure in academic medicine and contributed to his selection for positions as Director of The National Institutes of Health and President of the University of Florida. As commemorations of the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer of 1964 proceed, UMMC has become arguably the most racially integrated academic health center in the United States.