Child Development Group of Mississippi

So you went from Dean Dixon the con- the conductor.$$(Laughter) To Dean Dixon to Charles Drew [Charles R. Drew].$$To Charles Drew.$$(Laughter) Yeah.$$What was it? You just liked the way they looked (laughter)?$$(Laughter) Well, but there was just the influence. Now what made me do that, I don't know. But it also made me a little different because some of my family and some of the students told me, "You don't know what you want to do." So, you know, that's kind of crazy, a country boy from Terry, Mississippi, in grade school [Terry Grove School] saying he want to be a physician. And (laughter) are you following me? And certainly there was no black physicians around. But I can't say that I wasn't exposed to a physician because it happened to have been two things. I had a white Jewish physician, who was a bird hunter who wanted to come down and hunt birds on my property's land. And my daddy [Joe Smith], being the bigot he was, he would ask my daddy to go out in the woods with him, and my daddy would say, "Well, take that boy," (laughter), you know. And he took me (laughter) and I would start asking him questions and we would start interacting with these different questions. And he, and then sometimes on these bird hunts he would bring me material. And he, when he retired, he gave a set of medical books.$$How old were you then?$$Oh, probably ten.$$So you were first exposed to medicine by a white Jewish doctor--$$Um-hm.$$--who was a bird hunter on your daddy's land (simultaneous)?$$(Simultaneous) Dad's pro- Daddy's property, yeah.$$How improbable is that?$$Well, it was (laughter) not that improbable, but that's the (laughter), that's the circumstances.$Tell me about the impact of Medgar's [Medgar Evers] assassination on you and your focus, what--just, just recall that.$$That, again--that, again, was just a horrific experience, culminating in demonstrations in the street, on Rose and later his funeral. And of course, I attended his funeral. And Mrs. Sanders [Thelma Sanders] and I and a group, not again thinking about the impact of our lives, joined that march and walked hand in hand from Rose Street, from Lynch Street [John R. Lynch Street] to Capitol Street. And I was, we was dared to come across Capitol Street. And thank god John Doar and his group parted the waters and let us proceed up through, up Capitol, up Farish Street to Collins and Frazier Funeral Home [sic. Frazier and Collins Funeral Home; Collins Funeral Home, Inc., Jackson, Mississippi].$$So you marched from Rose Street--$$I marched from Capitol, from--it was the Lynch Street Masonic Temple (simultaneous)--$$(Simultaneous) Temple.$$--all the way from up what then was Terry Road [Jackson Terry Road; Terry Road], all the way up to--down Pascagoula [Street] to Farish Street and from Farish Street--$$Across Capitol Street.$$Right. That's where the stop was. We weren't--$$So you're across Capitol Street. You didn't act--$$We weren't supposed to cross Capitol Street.$$To cross Capitol Street--$$That was--$$--but you did.$$We did.$$Thanks to John Doar, D-O-A-R, who had been appointed by--$$Appointed--$$--Kennedy [President John Fitzgerald Kennedy] to be his ombudsman for civil rights issues.$$Yes.$$That was--$$But we were supposed to be more down like dogs when we crossed, when we crossed.$$So what exactly did John Doar do?$$He came out from somewhere and--$$So did he have federal marshals with him or something?$$Had federal marshals with him.$$And the, and the new, and the city police--$$City police--$$--is just--$$--who was parked on, they was parked on rooftops and everything at Capitol and at Capitol and Farish to post a blocker, so we crossed Capitol.$$And they moved aside?$$Moved aside.$$Now explain to me why the white power structure was so adamant about you not marching on Capitol Street but merely crossing it en route to the funeral home [Frazier and Collins Funeral Home; Collins Funeral Home, Inc., Jackson, Mississippi]? What (simultaneous)--$$(Simultaneous) Well--$$--what was, what was the thinking?$$It was, it was a symbol of, just a symbol of white oppression. We're in charge. That's the only thing that I can see, is a symbol of white oppression, that we were not supposed to be--we were not supposed to Capitol, cross Capitol Street. That was a great street.$$In the shadow of the old--$$It's--$$--state capitol.$$Shadow of the old state--a symbol of white power.