![]() Limitations like these fueled what Thomas Ward, the author of Black Physicians in the Jim Crow South *, considers a “self-fulfilling prophecy”: “Black physicians were usually excluded from being able to practice at any of the hospitals in the South,” he says. They had to compete for African American patients who could actually pay. African American physicians often were unable to get specialized training. While the AMA claimed not to discriminate, it left membership decisions up to its local chapters, which made an African American doctor hard pressed to find a chapter that would accept him, particularly in the South. Doctors had to be members of the AMA to practice at hospitals. Upon entering the profession, white doctors would join the American Medical Association, or AMA, an organization founded in 1847 that outlined standards for medical education and focused on improving public health. Starting out as an African American physician at the end of the 19th century was a daunting task, to say the least. It took John a year to save enough money to continue, but he made it. ![]() In John’s third and final year, Meharry decided to change its graduation requirements from three years to four, in order to be competitive with medical colleges nationwide. The students were taught primarily by white doctors, a former Confederate surgeon among them, some of whom sacrificed their reputations to teach the former slaves and children of slaves. He used the trail Ramsey had blazed: After getting a degree from Clark College in Atlanta, John was eventually accepted at Ramsey’s alma mater, Meharry Medical College, known then as the Meharry Medical Department of Central Tennessee College. What African American man would conceive of such a cockamamie thing?īut John would not be dissuaded. John’s father tried to forbid John from continuing his education beyond elementary school. Ramsey’s father had been a landowner who had 100 acres in Hogansville, Georgia, when he died, in 1896. Unlike Ramsey, however, John had no means. Motivated by a longing to help his community, he decided to become a doctor, too. John had never seen a doctor who looked like him. The man, Edward Ramsey, was a native son whose father, a “mulatto” man, had sent him to Nashville to medical school. But when John was around 12, the first “colored doctor,” as an 1881 edition of the LaGrange Reporter newspaper announced, moved to town. Their father intended the brothers to be sharecroppers, as well. John and Briny were born in Troup County, Georgia, to former slaves turned sharecroppers. There was no need for the boy’s leg to be amputated. John examined his nephew and told Briny not to worry. ![]() In Atlanta, Briny grabbed his son, hitched up his mule and wagon, and rode 38 miles to Coweta County. He was regularly mistaken for a janitor and told where to empty the trash. Harold Jordan, my father, was the first African American medical resident on record at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. John Henry Jordan is my great-grandfather. The story of African American doctors since John Henry Jordan’s days has been one of both incredible achievement and deep-seated discrimination. In 2015, they made up around 6 percent of practicing physicians in America-an increase of only a few percentage points since the middle of the 20th century. More than a century later, African American doctors still face barriers when it comes to educational opportunities and advancement in their careers. These men not only endured racism, but often weren’t trusted even by other African Americans, who believed they were poorly trained compared to their white counterparts. Georgia had 65 black physicians in 1905, according to The Way It Was in the South: The Black Experience In Georgia, by Donald Lee Grant. He’d graduated at the top of his class from medical school at a time when most former slaves had never seen a doctor who looked like them. John Henry Jordan, Briny’s brother, was the first African American doctor in Coweta County, Georgia. He aimed to get a second opinion, and he knew just which doctor to call on: his brother. Briny may not have been a learned man, but he was no dummy. A portrait of John Henry Jordan (Courtesy of Karen Jordan)Īfter examining Briny’s son, the doctor said he’d have to amputate one of the boy’s legs.
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