Fighting segregation in hospitals
Although the Pitt County hospital where Best worked desegregated earlier than other facilities, it maintained a "colored floor," where black patients stayed regardless of their condition. His recollection of this lower-level segregation prompts memories of his activism as a member of the Pitt County Interracial Committee. He pushed to end the practice of racially guided hospital admittance and for hospital staff to treat African-American patients with courtesy.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Andrew Best, April 19, 1997. Interview R-0011. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- KAREN KRUISE THOMAS:
-
How would you characterize the racial climate in this area when you came
to practice? Was there a feeling that there were opportunities for
minority physicians here, or did you feel that there were going to be
difficulties?
- ANDREW BEST:
-
My mind was open. To me, the fact that I could get on the staff here in
Greenville at Pitt County was a plus. Once I got here, I
didn't run into any real hostility, but I could tell that
some members of the staffߞthere were about 36 members of the
staff then, and now there are over 500, with Pitt Memorial and the
medical schoolߞsome physicians were a little cool. If I said,
"Good morning," they'd just say,
"Hi." But very much to my liking, there were a few
people who saw health care delivery as something that everybody should
be involved and concerned with. There was a lady pediatrician on the
staff, Dr. Malene Irons, and her husband, Dr. Fred Irons, was also on
the staff in internal medicine. Early on, from the time I came in
'54 for about the following ten years, all the black patients
were admitted to the first floor of the east wing of the hospital. Even
though we used the same delivery room, and the same surgical suites, to
be bedded and admitted, they were all on one floor of the east wing,
whether you had pneumonia or a newborn baby, you were on the so-called
colored floor. Dr. Malene Irons, as a pediatrician, got interested in
this problem, because in the early days, we had what you called an
isolette that you put the prematures in, so they'd have the
proper warmth and humidity. The newborn nursery with the isolettes was
up on another floor. There were some barriers to having a black baby in
the isolette in the newborn nursery. That black baby had to come on back
downstairs, and shift as they could with the mother. This got Dr. Malene
interested, and she and I had some very frank but friendly conversations
about the problem. This is prior to the '64 Civil Rights Act,
in the early '60s. Let me back up. In the late
'50s, in the community there was great concern about the
problem of segregation. There was convened a voluntary committee known
as the Pitt County Interracial Committee. We had ten volunteers from the
black side of the population, and ten from the white side. The idea of
this particular group was a mandate to work on the problem of
segregation. This was one of our agreed goals, to work on the problem of
segregation at all levels, public accommodations, lunch counters and
all. Dr. Malene was one of the volunteers. There was a white Episcopal
minister, Richard Ottaway, who came out to my office, and we sat down
and talked about the whole problem. Out of these conversations, we
decided to involve some other people, and we sent out for volunteers,
and the group was formed.
- KAREN KRUISE THOMAS:
-
So you helped found the Committee?
- ANDREW BEST:
-
Reverend Ottaway was the chairperson, and I was the vice-chairperson. As
churches will do, they'll transfer their ministers from one
charge to another, Reverend Ottaway was transferred after about a year
here, and then the chairmanship was placed on my shoulders, and there
was another "white liberal," as the folks put it then,
Ed Waldrop, who became vice-chair. Ed Waldrop's name and
contributions became very important as we got ready to build a new
hospital, of the magnitude it is now and that would accommodate an
affiliation agreement with the medical school. So we went along with
this, and from the standpoint of being members of the Interracial
Committee, Dr. Malene Irons and I approached the staff. We got an
agreement from the chief of staff that they would hear us out. This was
in the early '60s. My concern was one, that the hospital
should admit patients based on the disease process rather than the color
of their skin. Another concern was the fact that even the orderlies and
nurses and hospital workers were segregated. They had dining facilities,
with a sign on this side for colored, and that side for white. I told
them I wanted the signs taken away. Another concern locally was that
every patient admitted, if it was an eight-year-old girl, it would be
little Miss Suzie Jones. If a boy, Master Billy Smith. There was no
title given to a minority person, but all the white patients were Mr. or
Mrs. and on down. So I expressed that to the open staff. My
recommendation was to title everybody or title nobody. You can look at
the hospital records now, and rather than dealing with titling
everybody, they opted to title nobody. That part was all right with me.