Florence Ridlon. A Black Physician’s Struggle for Civil Rights: Edward C. Mazique, M.D. Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 2005. xxii, 391 pp., illus. $29.95.

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The inspiring theme of personal success against the odds gives unity to sociologist Florence Ridlon’s biographical study of prominent physician, civic leader, and civil rights activist Edward C. Mazique. From his childhood spent on cotton plantations near Natchez, Mississippi, Mazique rose to become one of the most respected physicians practicing in the nation’s capital and the president of both the Washington, D.C., Medico-Chirugical Society and the predominantly black National Medical Association. Ridlon’s extensive use of lengthy direct quotations from the hours of recorded interviews she conducted with Mazique creates a work that is in many ways more a memoir than a traditional biography. The first two chapters, “Mississippi Roots” and “A Country Boy,” explore the surprising rise of the Mazique family from pre–Civil War slavery to post–Civil War plantation ownership in the Natchez area. The book’s presentation of the entrepreneurial character and high expectations of Mazique’s father and grandfather offers insight into the influences that enabled young Edward Mazique to move beyond the limited horizons of Mississippi’s racial caste system to gain a private high school education at all-black Natchez College in a town where, in 1929, no public high schools were open to black students.