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Today, today is December first, this is December 1, 1974. Now, this is the year of Watergate, the year of a news resignation. Nixon's resignation board has taken over he's seen all over the world he's been to just return from his trip, from his trip to Russia, and economies in a heck of a state just now. We don't know whether we're going into a depression, we're going into a deep recession or wherever, wherever it is, we just don't know what's coming on. But at any rate, at present time, economic development is at a standstill. So while we're waiting around for something to develop, I think, backtrack a little bit of my story to latter part 1957. When I first came to Tarboro, shortly after I came to Tarboro, I became identified with the black, the state black Medical Society, that is the Old North State Medical Society, which I've stated before, but anyway, I'll state again that it is the second oldest black Medical Society in the United States. And there was the it was only through state medical societies with theory local organizations that are like doctors could get together and talk about common problems and be updated to some extent on the changes in medical practice surgical. We had there was we had a local medical society which was called which was known as the Rocky Mountain Academy of Medicine. And the membership embraced the black physicians in Edgecombe and Nash counties, and a few from Halifax County. That was our local medical society. In addition to that, we have a Regional Medical Society we call the East Carolina Medical Society, which was composed of members from the different counties in eastern part of the state. The East Carolina Medical Society was an affiliate of the Old North State Medical Society that was state, state medical society. And

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I was glad to become affiliated with the different when all of the different levels of the medical black medical fraternity in this area. And I began to from very beginning I made it a point to attend the meetings, of meetings of all societies in order to try to keep up with our very little we found that we did discuss our problems. And we had plenty of discussion of problems. However, there was the discussion of advances in medicine and surgery were very meager. After all, there was all that we had and I continue to put in my appearance and give support to all of the medical societies in order to sort of try to bring about some improvement. In about five years, I was elected recording secretary and the Secretary of the medical society, at Old North State Medical Society. I held that for several years. And then progressively I was elected to different offices that fire me. In 1957. I was elected president of Old North State Medical Society. During the interim, the both the both the attendance and the quality of the subject matter discussed at the Medical Society meeting to improve immensely. I want to hasten to say, however, that the improvement was not as a result of my efforts, I would just wanted to gain. The secretary treasurer of the medical society at that time and for many years previously was back declared Don Hill, who was the Medical Director of the North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company. Router Dannielle labored hard and long in an effort to bring some life into the medical society. He was a graduate of Harvard Medical School. And as new, younger men came into the state and in better prepared, better trained, some in the specialties of surgery, some in internal medicine, whatnot, that now Neil insisted that they be pushed forward to the front, and insisted that they take part in the programs and bring us some worthwhile information. During my tenure in office, we attempted to continue the improvements that Dr. Don Hill had initiated. Now, let's take another look at this as the typical Negro patient that we treated back in those days, most of them were sharecroppers, as I say, with very little money. And we have to treat his patient we saw him in our offices, that we meet housecalls, sometimes as far as 25, and 35 miles in the country. If we were near enough to those of us who are near enough to a black operator hospital, we're very fortunate in that we could get a seriously ill patients into those hospitals, you know, if they were bed space available, but those of us out here where I was, where they had to go so far, in order to get to black hospital, sometimes the patient will be dead by the time you get there. And if they were fortunate enough to get the patient into a white operated hospital out here, relationship with their patients start right at the door of the hospital, and we had to turn him over to a physician or surgeon at a white hospital, we were unable to file our cases through. It can be rarely seen that if we can fire off patients through in medicine and surgery, wherever you wherever you had, we couldn't, we couldn't improve our condition, we couldn't improve our training. In fact, that training stopped, we were, you know what I might call a traffic cop. So far as we see the patient in the home, and we do all the data we're getting out at three o'clock in the morning. And we see this patient, these hospital care, we have direct him to that face hospital, just like a traffic cop directing their stream of traffic around the corner, he will last us and so far, and we were unable to improve our diagnostic skill treatments. When those of us who had a surgical who had surgical background, were able to practice our surgery at the now there's another element in this thing that the North Carolina Department of Department of Public Welfare gave us a nominal amount of money for seeing these patients in the office and in the home. And if they had to go to hospital, the physician in the hospital was paid and almost irregular amount of irregular charges for treatment treating patients. This was sort of bad in that we had to do all the day to week and if any money was to be if money was to be made in the transaction, that was made by the way, physician who who only accepted a patient has to do with a provisional diagnosis that he had some of the way go on, he could go on and develop it, find out what's wrong with the patient, and administer treatment, surgical, medical, whatever it may be, which would be indicated and he'd be much better pay for what he had to do. Didn't have to go through all of the dirty work of getting the patient in from the rural areas, anything like that, well, black physicians began to think about this thing. And we, we you know, just want to know where the hell we couldn't get the privileges in hospitals to look after our patients. Where some of us need applications to the quiet hospitals in our area for staff privileges. And we were told, advised that one of the face prerequisites for staff appointments well was a membership in the State Medical Society. In order to become a member or get membership in the state medical society you have to be a member of the kind of medical society now in the event. A fair minded way physician would recommend this for membership in the kind of medical society. The membership, general membership is kind of medical society would immediately turn down our application review their application for men membership. Even in the case, even if we had been able to obtain membership in the white kind medical society, we could not become members of the State Medical Society because they had a white only clause in there, you had to be not only be great grading a face class, a medical school, must not only have passed the board in North Carolina State Board of Medical Examiners, but you also have to be white, we have that white clause in there. Some of our members applied for membership, some black physicians apply for membership in the medical society. And it was they were politely turned down. And we felt that there was discrimination, uncalled for discrimination. But as a group, and as the we weren't unable to fight the team, because we were unable to get into the white American society, we weren't able to get anybody on our side, except for a few sympathetic white physicians that saw the inequalities and somebody who had guts enough to stand up in statements, the whole thing was unfair. In as much as we'd all finished class in medical schools we'd all pass the Board of Medical Examiners, North Carolina Board of Medical examiners, and we each have the same type of license, we could not get membership, we could not get staff membership. Because of that solely because of the fact that we were black. Well that called for a lot of infighting by the sympathetic way physicians who worked very hard in order to get that white only clause removed from the state, the Charles State Medical Society, where we wouldn't be discouraged just couldn't afford to be discouraged data saying right now. One of the meetings for the ordinary state, it was decided that we would form a committee committee was appointed to contact the offices of the medical society, the North Carolina Medical Society wait. And as, North Carolina Medical Center that just why we were denied membership in the organization. The committee members, the committee, members of the committee, including Dr. Emory Ran,

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Dr. Hubert Eaton, Dr. George Evans, one or two others and myself, we contacted the Old North State when we contacted North Carolina Medical Society. And they did send a committee to meet with us in an effort to give us some information on the questions that we had put had put to them. The first question we had to ask that we asked the members of the North State Medical Society was why is it that we could not obtain staff memberships? So that we would may be able to follow through our patients in their hospitals and treat them just as any other doctor was allowed to do? They actually given us the answers very, the answers given by the members of committee theory now went back to saying, well, it's alright with me. You understand how to deal with people, white people they wouldn't stand for black doctors or better wouldn't stand for colored doctors treating patients in the same hospital if they were here. It was the white men of thought to be laws would have to be changed before we could be admitted to their societies. And furthermore, they stated that they had social activities, and that they didn't think that the white position would stand up for negros and whites the entertain at the same time. It's a social activities and facts level. So they would know what would happen if a black doctor would ask the whites for a desk. It would be in certain to the whites and it would call so much unplayed in this day. We just just couldn't stand for it. We just get one venerable white physician said he just brought up the the hypothetical case, what will happen in the event that they had a banquet and a black physician was sitting next to his wife at the banquet table. He just couldn't stand up anything like this would not be able to take it all. And they would call it so much unpleasantness rather than go all through the unpleasantness, they thought sounded better. They thought it better to exclude all black positions. other circumstances we found we weren't getting anywhere. And, of course, at the end of the meeting, it was we found that we hadn't made any progress whatsoever. And we went back to the onus on our State Medical Society. As the interim meeting the board of directors and we made a report. Of course, it was decided then that there was nothing further we could do, except to have either friends who had our friends who were white friends, who were already members of the old, early North Carolina Medical Society, Pfeiffer's in the House of Delegates meeting, I've already recorded, stated, just what, what subsequently happened that finally led to the opening of the doors of all the state medical societies to the black as a result of testing and civil rights laws. And as a result of the establishment of the Hill Burton Foundation for improving our hospitals dealing hospitals. It was typically it was honestly understood perfectly that in the Hill Burton hospital, physicians should be allowed their staff membership regardless of race, creed or color so long as they pass the the necessary qualifications insofar as certification by respective state boards