Gastrointestinal Surgeon

Did you have an idea that those [gastrointestinal] problems were not being addressed in the black community basically?$$Yes.$$All right. Okay. Are there any particular problems--gastrointestinal problems that black people have that would--?$$No. Disease is not unique to race. But my grandmother Lillie M. Jackson--who directed the Baltimore [Maryland] branch of the NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People] for thirty-five years who was instrumental in stripping apartheid of the hiring practices of the city, ensuring that teachers would get equal salary, and hiring the first black policemen, the first black fireman, instituting black cabdrivers, instituting black gas and electric company employees--had always admonished us growing up that you had to be aware of your contribution to society. One of her favorite witticisms was, "They may foreclose on your mortgage. They may repossess your car. But they can never take away a first class education." So she insisted on academic excellence. Once you had attained that, she also insisted that you give back to the community. And so she admonished all of us that service to people is the rent you pay for your space on earth. And as long as you remain a part of the people, you'll be successful. If you feel that you are above the people, you won't be successful. And that advice influenced where I located my practice in a section of the city with the greatest need and became very successful in my practice based on my grandmother's principles. And that simply said, if you had a profes--if you have a profession, you can't isolate your services from people. You have to go where the people are. And you will be very successful economically. You choose otherwise and more affluent surrounds, you won't be as successful. Very practical advice.$You're basically then sustained by your family and this sense of conviction, you know, from your family that you ought to stick out this junior high school experience [Gwynns Falls Junior High School, Baltimore, Maryland] which was a, you know, it was a great opportunity. But it wasn't very pleasant. Did it ever get any better? I mean after it, I mean--?$$Toward the end of my last year. Okay. And it became somewhat better.$$Okay. All right.$$But the nurturing and the experience the materials that were involved in the art department enabled me to win a citywide art contest with a painting that depicted waiting passengers in a train station. And my mother pointed out to me what the crux of the issue was in terms of the damaging aspect of segregation that decided the 1954 Supreme Court decision [Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas]. All of the people in the station that I painted had white faces. And [psychologist, civil rights activist] Kenneth Clark used that argument in terms of the damaging aspect of segregation in his doll experiment. And that showed the psychological impact. And Charles Houston who was the Dean of Howard University--Howard University Law School [Washington, D.C.] who met regularly in my home with my parents [Clarence Murice Mitchell, Jr. and Juanita Elizabeth Mitchell Jackson] , formulating the strategy for the desegregation educationally in Baltimore, utilized that argument to successfully desegregate Baltimore school systems, in an afternoon. Which had taken the national effort many, many years to implement, at the Supreme Court level.