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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview R-0011, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Activist and physician Andrew Best describes his experiences as an African American medical practitioner in North Carolina during the civil rights era, and his own efforts to desegregate medical practice and spur integration in other arenas across the state. After attending all-black schools, including one of the few medical schools that admitted African Americans, and fighting in World War II in a segregated regiment, Best devoted himself to integrating the medical practice in his community as well as changing the mindsets of segregationists. He did so using a variety of methods, but his primary tool was communication. A member of at least two interracial organizations, he sought to convince both the black and white communities of the wisdom of integration. Posing the most significant challenge to his goal were the die-hard segregationists who might, for example, refuse service at a store even to a black doctor who had just treated an injured white police officer. This interview provides a detailed look at the dismantling of segregated medicine and the enduring obstacles to equality of care.
Physician Andrew Best recalls his encounters with racial segregation inside and outside Pitt County Memorial Hospital in in North Carolina during the civil rights era.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
I'm interviewing Dr. Andrew Best about the Old North State Medical Society and health care desegregation in North Carolina. Dr. Best, could you just start with your educational background, when you were born, and when you stared your practice?
I was born and reared in Lenoir County, about three miles northeast of
Kinston. I went to the neighborhood school, which was segregated, until
I finished the seventh grade. There was no high school in the county at
that time for black folk, Negroes as we were known then, and I'm sure
you've noticed the difference in the nomenclature. It was colored, it
was Negro, and then it was black, and now it's Afro-American. There was
a high school for so-called colored in Kinston, and I went to high
school there. Of course, the high school in Kinston accepted
Afro-American students, but they had to be responsible for getting
there, as opposed to the white kids in the consolidated schools in the
county—they had buses. We black toddlers had to walk to school. It was
about three and a half miles from my house to school. For those years I
was in high school, my basic means of getting to school was walking.
Sometimes there were neighbors who would recognize my sister and I
walking to school, and they'd pick us up, or we'd hitch a ride. In the
last two years, I had an older brother who had some trouble with his
eyes, so he took a vacation from school after he finished the ninth
grade. So when my older sister and I finished our ninth grade years,
then there were three of us, and this older brother had a car, so he
could transport us in our junior and senior years. At that time, the
high school only went to eleventh grade. I graduated from high school in
1936. Being a country farmer's boy, and not having the facilities to go
right on off to college, I was out of school for four years, and went
back and enrolled in college in 1940 up at A & T College. In
later years, we got into the university system. From there, I was
drafted into the Army, and I entered the Army on April 30, 1943, after
completing two quarters of my junior year at A & T. So I was
pulled right out of college, as they did many other advanced ROTC
students. So I went into the service, and went into the Officers
Candidate School in the infantry at Ft. Benning, Georgia. From there, I
was in the first wave of replacements to go to the 92nd Infantry
Division, which was an all-black division at that time. The 92nd was
engaged in the fighting in Italy in the European theater. We were on the
Italian side of it, rather than with the French and English. I landed on
Leghorn, Italy on my birthday in 1944. From there, I participated in the
infantry battles up the boot of Italy toward Milan. I was wounded in
action and got the Purple Heart with the cluster. For some reason or
another, I received a Bronze Star during those engagements. Luckily, the
war ended for us on June 8, 1945. We called it V-E Day, victory in
Europe. There was a year I spent in Italy while we were cleaning up all
those ammo depots and a lot of other administrative things, cleaning up
the destruction and aftermath of the war. I returned to the States and
went back to A & T in September of '46 and graduated in '47 with
a BS degree in Agriculture. I had a minor in biological science, in
chemistry, and in English. Doing all of that, I wanted to go to medical
What kind of training did you receive in your internship?
General practice, including obstetrics and gynecology. I had a rotation in anesthesiology, too. They let me out of the army a little early, in December 1953, and I came to Greenville to set up the practice of family medicine. Then in 1954, I got affiliated with the Old North State Medical Society as a formal organization. From my association with the Old North State, I was right in the eye of the storm of changes in health care delivery. We were fighting the problem of segregation, which was a real problem for us minority doctors. I happened to be there when the Medical Society of the State of North Carolina offered us scientific membership. Of course, Dr. Emery Rand, a family practitioner from Charlotte, and Dr. Joe Gordon, a radiologist from Winston-Salem, accepted the scientific membership, but the organization as a whole rejected it, because we could attend the scientific sessions, but none of the social sessions. We of the Old North State, the majority of us rejected that. I don't know what year they decided to offer us full membership, do you happen to know?
When I talked to Dr. Cochran last weekend, I don't believe it was until the late '60s.
It was some time. But after they offered us full membership, I joined
the North Carolina Medical Society also. I was a member of both groups.
In the late '60s and early '70s, when we started to accelerate our
efforts for a medical school here in Greenville, I was on one of the
reference committees. I was actively involved in the workings of the
North Carolina Medical Society because I was one of the real members
after that desegregation. There was a lot that I think I was able to
help get accomplished in helping to get the medical school here [at East
Carolina University]. I might mention in passing
Do you happen to know when the Pitt County Hospital was built?
After World War II, I don't know exactly. It was pretty new when I got there in '54.
Lenoir Memorial, was it a county hospital?
It was a county hospital, but it was the successor to the old Parrot Hospital. I don't know exactly what year it was built.
I wonder if Lenoir got any federal money to build their hospital?
It's only been in the last year that Lenoir has opened its doors to a minority physician. But I am told by Dr. John J. Hannibal, who was a minority physician in Kinston who just retired, that they invited him and my family physician, Dr. Harrison, to join. But they did not accept, because I understand that they wanted to limit their privileges, so neither Dr. Hannibal nor Dr. Harrison accepted any sort of invitation to become members of that staff. It's been only recently, in the past two years or so, that any minority physicians were members of the staff at Lenoir County.
It's interesting that as early as '54, Pitt County was opening admitting rights to minority physicians, because a lot of hospitals, even those built with Hill-Burton funds, didn't. I wonder what made the difference at that hospital?
I have been told that the use of federal Hill-Burton funds set the stage so that the attitude of the people here at Pitt Memorial would go ahead and open their doors.
Some people must have taken that more seriously than others.
I'm sure that there were people who were segregationists born, segregationist bred, and going to be segregationist even after they're dead. Those "now and forevermore" like George Wallace—of course, Governor Wallace has changed now in his old decrepit age. But one of his pet statements was "segregation forever—today, tomorrow and forever."
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?
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 staff—there were about 36 members of the staff then, and now there are over 500, with Pitt Memorial and the medical school—some 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.
So you helped found the Committee?
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.
Did you remain the only minority physician in the hospital for most of this period?
I was the only minority doctor in the hospital for the next 25 years. There was one doctor who came in, but he didn't stay for about three months. He went into the service and went out to Houston, Texas. I was the only one in the whole county.
If you were the only minority doctor, then I suppose a lot of the other physicians did admit black patients?
Oh, yeah. But strangely enough, the white doctors in town had two
waiting rooms, one for colored, one for white. When I opened up, I was
here to serve the public. One waiting room. From the first week, I had a
significant number of white patients, and I let it be known that I was
here to deliver health care. Then we went on in the desegregation
process in the hospital. In some instances, it might have been
surprising, but maybe I shouldn't have been so surprised. There were
people who were for what I was recommending, Dr. Malene Irons was my key
person. Dr. Malene and I would sit down and talk, just like you and I
are talking. We had a strategy for trying to be sure that we got the
votes on the staff for them to do this whole thing. It was going to be a
big jump, like jumping off a two thousand foot cliff, and we knew that.
But there were personalities like Dr. Ray Minges, who was one of the
Pepsi-Cola Minges, and they were millionaires in their own right from
Pepsi-Cola. I have never had a better or fairer friend than Ray Minges.
He practiced surgery as a hobby—he died of a brain tumor—and he got most
of the indigent
Can you guess about how many of each group there were?
Out of the 36 people on the staff, I would say we probably had about ten who were with us, and about 10 more who we felt were leaning our way, and another ten in the middle group who were leaning the other way, and then about half a dozen who were segregation now and forevermore. First of all, we put a lot of effort into those ten we thought might be leaning our way, simply because this was the right thing, and the economical thing, to do. There's another thing in human relations that ties into this, when Terry Sanford became governor. One of his acts, in terms of trying to foster better race relations, was to appoint the Good Neighbor Council. After he was inaugurated in 1960, he formed the Good Neighbor Council by executive order. He invited a group of people to the executive mansion in Raleigh and laid out his plan. So all this stuff with the Pitt County Interracial Committee preceded that. When we made our presentation, I did all the talking. Dr. Malene is a very mild-mannered lady, so she said, you go ahead and be the spokesman. Strangely enough, they bought it. The majority of the staff voted for it. One of my points I kept hammering on was that this change is coming. It is better for us to bring change through orderly evolution than let it come as a disorderly revolution. We can help it to come, or we can permit it, through our reluctant attitude, to come through violent and disorderly revolution.
Was the issue of federal money involved at all?
There was no issue of federal money. There were two things I kept
harping on. There had started to be some discussion of civil rights from
a federal standpoint, and the civil rights act that was finally passed
in '64. But this predated that. I said we should do this because number
one, it's right. And number two, it's cheaper for us to do it this way.
Why go and provide double facilities when we can have one facility
serving everybody? The third thing, it's going to come, whether we like
it or not. So we might as well do it our way. So they bought it, and
went on an desegregated the hospital. In that same context, this
Committee was working for public accommodations to be desegregated. This
success in desegregating public accommodations—lunch counters, hotels,
So you're saying the businesses voluntarily desegregated before the hospital did.
Yes.
But it was pretty close.
Yes, maybe six months or a year. But through the work of this Interracial Committee, this thing was going more or less step by step.
Do you remember if anyone was mentioning the Simkins vs. Cone case at all? That was in '63.
No. But that was a case up in Guilford County and Greensboro, and really, I don't think that had anything to do with our work here. I didn't mention it, and it didn't come up.
I don't think that case was very widely publicized or well-known.
Probably not.
The third jewel in the crown of desegregation was when I was able to persuade Dr. [Leo] Jenkins [President of East Carolina University] to desegregate the university without a court order. All of these things were following a trend, the wind was blowing in a certain direction to get public accommodations desegregated, to get the hospital desegregated, and of course, the schools were in the evolutionary process of desegregation themselves.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
You had started to tell me about desegregating ECU without a court order.
It so happened that Dr. Jenkins and I had developed a very cordial
relationship. I approached Dr. Jenkins about desegregating the
university, and said, "Why can't we go on and desegregate this
university without a court order?" This was in the early '60s also. The
public schools were under[going] desegregation, but we had been able to
desegregate public accommodations and the hospital. During the same time
frame, the schools were desegregating after Julius Chambers [NAACP legal
counsel] had gotten Judge McMillan to implement the desegregation order
in Charlotte by busing. I went to Leo as a friend—we were close enough
so in private conversations, we called each other by first name. Dr.
Jenkins had several concerns. At that time, Chapel Hill and [NC] State
were under court order to desegregate. He said, "First of all, it would
be more damaging to our image to admit a minority student who couldn't
cut it"—that was his way of saying, who didn't have the background or
equipment to survive or achieve, who would flunk out, in other words.
"We wouldn't want that." At that time, I was conducting an enrichment
program for high school students on a volunteer basis every week. We
would run a 14-week course from the latter part of February to April. He
had some knowledge of this project, and I said, "I have students who
come to me every Wednesday from Goldsboro on the west, all the way to
Elizabeth City on the east. I know of at least five to seven hundred
black students who can "cut it," using his term, by name. So that's no
problem. Then he mentioned his second concern was, "You remember the
James Meredith situation down in Mississippi?" He was concerned about
the reaction of those die-hard segregationists, who he called the
"rednecks." I said that I had considered this. "The student I'm going to
recommend lives here in Pitt County, so she has a right to be here. I
have already made arrangement with her father for her to stay at home,
she lives about 18 miles away, and he's going to give her a car so she
can commute from home to school. By that first year, I'm thinking that
students will become so accustomed to a black face being around that it
will kind of soften up the will of the rednecks." So he thought for a
minute, and told me to have her apply. I had the young lady apply, her
name was Laura Marie Leary, and she was admitted. To really satisfy Dr.
Jenkins, I said, "I'm giving her a key to my house, so that my house can
be her home away from home. If the weather's bad, she can come, and if
I've got one slice of bread, she can have half of it." Laura Marie went
through with flying colors. There were one or two mild incidents where
she was walking across the campus, and somebody would do a catcall,
"There goes a nigger," or something like that. But essentially without
incident. Nothing happened that she could not deal with. She didn't run
into what those female cadets ran into down at the Citadel, with hazing
and making life so miserable that they withdrew. Laura persisted and
went on through. She represented a crack in the door, and the next year,
the door
Eastern North Carolina has a reputation for being hard-line.
But a lot of the credit goes to people like Dr. Malene Irons, Dick Ottaway, Ed Waldrop, and many others who were of the same mind and mentality, that once the core of leadership, including me and some other folks, presented something that was feasible and would be productive for the community, we were able to persuade enough people to buy into it so we made it work.
Sounds like there was a lot of cooperation going on.
To show you some of the things we participated in to soften up the black community, we published—
That's interesting, the black community also had to be softened up.
Yeah. We published a full-page article in the Daily Reflector [the local Greenville newspaper] called "Our Thing." I was the chief author, but others contributed. I'll have my secretary mail you a copy. What I did was to go through at each level, what the teachers' attitude should be, what the superintendent's and the students' and the parents' attitudes should be in this whole context of desegregation. You heard me mention this volunteer project where I was talking with the students? The background of that whole project was to give these minority students some type of what I call "correlative education," where we correlate the importance of every subject in the curriculum. For example, if I'd give a child a question that dealt with a decimal, I was real hard if that decimal point was in the wrong place. I said the difference in a decimal point could be ten dollars or a hundred dollars. You've lost 90 dollars. I'd make it sound real dramatic. We'd also try to emphasize spelling and capitalization. What I was really doing is giving this black child something he hadn't gotten in his formal education to prepare him to compete and survive in a desegregated society. That was an observation on my part, and a lot of other people believed in the same thing. So we had this enrichment program to try to prepare. All of those things fit together, Karen, to ease what could have been problems in the whole desegregation process in the schools.
So it sounds like the community leaders tried to anticipate problems.
Anticipate, that's exactly it.
You as a physician, I presume, had a role in the community that helped you become a leader, and where were some of the other leaders coming from? Education, or the churches?
The situation we were laboring under, the doctor in the community was looked up to for leadership. Sometimes, they rose to the occasion and participated, and were very effective, but I know some cases where a doctor was more interested in making that dollar, and following his social wishes, where they didn't fill the role as effectively as they could have. My background as a poor country boy who had suffered many a moon under some of those undesirable consequences put within me an extra interest, zest and persistence to do some things that should have been done. Sometimes I characterize myself as not only the doctor, but the minister, the priest, the counselor, the psychiatrist. There came some times when I had to fit into all of those roles, not that I counted myself an expert. But I had a philosophy that whatever I could do that would be helpful, I ought to do. And by the grace of God, I shall do.
Can you say who some of your role models or heroes might have been?
Yes. My old family doctor, Dr. J. P. Harrison was one of my main role models. I had a history teacher in high school named Elijah Baker who was a great role model. All my high school teachers were very supportive, but I point Mr. Baker out because after having been out of school, trying to work and save enough money to go back to college, Mr. Baker was the one who wrote me a strong letter of recommendation. When I walked into President Bluford's office in Greensboro, and handed him the letter from one of his friends, Mr. Baker, he looked up at me and said, "Son, the quarter's half over. Late registration closed last week." But stopped and read Mr. Baker's letter, and said, "Go down the hall and tell Dean Gibbs to see if he can't find enough classes to get you signed up. On second thought, I'll go myself."
That must have been some letter!
Mr. Baker told how long he'd known me, and some of the struggles I had,
and persisted in finishing high school, and "this young man has great
potential, and we are obligated to give him an opportunity." So he is a
great role model. On the college level, I told you I was enrolled as a
student of agriculture. Dean John C. McLaughlin, who died last December
ten days shy of 102 years old, was the chief role model, because he
salvaged me, Karen, when I had reached a point where I was almost
unsalvageable. As I returned to A & T in September of '46 after
having spent three and a half of [what were supposed to be] the best
years of my life, I was frustrated, I was disgusted, I was dejected. I
had made up my mind that I would not spend the time to pursue the
profession of medicine. I had decided on a second choice, to enter some
university, preferably Cornell, where a good friend of mine had gone,
who I had a lot of respect for and who was a landscape architect. I had
a great affinity for flowers and beautiful lawns, so I decided I was
going to compromise, and I could get my master's in two years in
landscape architecture. The dean heard about it. I didn't tell him, but
some of the boys in one of his classes were talking, and said, "Best has
decided that he isn't going to go into medicine." So he stopped me and
said, "What's this I hear about you not going into medicine, Andrew?" He
had
Was Meharry your first choice?
Yes. But that got me turned back in the right direction, because when I came back from the service, I just started shaking my head. I wouldn't be sitting here today had it not been for that 45 minute tongue-lashing that I got from Dean McLaughlin. So he's one of my great role models.
What about your experience in the service really discouraged you? Or was it coming back that discouraged you?
I had a few little things in the service that didn't go right, or I wished had gone in another direction. I felt the pangs of segregation a lot of times. But that wasn't what bothered me. The main thing that made me so frustrated and dejected was that the army had taken three and a half of the very best years of my life, and now I don't have all this time. It's going to take four years to go to medical school, at least two years post-graduate training, so that's six more years that I'm dealing with. So that added up to my decision that I would be happy as a landscape architect, and it would be profitable. I could reach that goal in probably two or two and a half years, where I'm looking at at least six years or maybe eight beyond college. The time lines were beginning to bother me. I can't live forever, and I only have so much time. When you're leaning a certain way, Karen, everything weighs in, and really weighs more than it is worth. The big thing that Dean McLaughlin got me to see was, if you spend those extra years, you're still a relatively young man, you'll be able to do something that you could do otherwise. Number one, for Andrew, and number two, for all the people that you love and admire. He said, "I've been watching you for these four years. I know you have some humanistic tendencies in your mind and your soul. To be able to do things for others, now that's going to be satisfying to you." He was able to convince me, and now I'm glad he did.
Did coming home to a very segregated society after World War II make you want to become active in civil rights, or did you not start that till later on?
I have always had, from high school right on up, a great affinity for wanting to see people accepted. I guess that goes back, I've listened to some of the tales told by Dr. Harrison, my family doctor, who had suffered many indignities because of segregation. He just had to forge on and ignore them, and do the right thing anyway. A part of being interested in human rights had its roots real early. There have been some stumbling blocks from time to time, but it's been more good than bad. I have seem some changes, and more important to be, I have helped or even caused some of them to be.
Before you got active in trying to encourage the North Carolina Medical Society to desegregate its membership, had you done any other civil rights work before that?
Not formally, but as the civil rights movement began to take shape, I
was among the first to applaud and send a little money when Dr. Martin
Luther King started up his activities after this Rosa Parks incident
down in Alabama. I've always been involved, and it bothered me when I
would see something that I felt to be right, where it would be wrong to
ignore it. A couple of cases in point. In December of '53, I was getting
ready to get out of the Army, and I was traveling from Kinston, and was
going through Windsor, headed for Ahoskie. A schoolmate of mine had
invited me down to look over the area. As I got out of Windsor, headed
toward Ahoskie, it had been snowing a little bit, and there was snow on
the sides of the road, back in the woods and in the shady places. I came
upon a car, it had gotten away from the driver and was on its top, with
the wheels sticking straight up in the air. I thought it looked like a
patrol car, and as I was stopping, there was a car meeting me that
stopped at the same time. The patrolman was down in there, and was
pinned in the car. If we hadn't moved the blanket away from his face, he
was going to suffocate. So we got that off, and were able to get him
out. He had a compound fracture of the femur, with some of the bones
sticking through the skin. It so happened that I had my medical bag with
me, and had a little morphine, so we got him out, made a hammock with
the blanket, and got him as comfortable as he could be. The other guy
cut some twigs about like this, and we made a splint for the leg.
Somebody called an ambulance to come pick him up. I didn't say a word,
and didn't tell anybody who I was. So I got down to Ahoskie, and stopped
at the service station. I got a little mud on my hands, and wanted to
wash my hands. I told the clerk, "Give me a Coca-cola please, and a pack
of chewing gum." So he put it up on the counter. I said, "Do you have
anywhere I can go wash my hands." And he said, "Got no damn place for
niggers to wash their hands." So I turned right around, and I had an
impulse to tell him, "Well, I got these hands dirty saving the life of
one of you white folks," but I didn't. He had opened the Coke, but I
left it right on the counter, got in my car, and went on. Three or four
weeks later, I got a letter from the state highway patrol commander. I
guess somebody must have gotten my license number. He wrote me the
nicest letter, commending and
That's an incredible story. I'm real interested in Dr. Harrison that you mentioned. I was wondering if you'd tell me a little about him. It sounds like you've chosen a slightly different way of doing things, even though he was your role model. There was a difference between the older and the younger generation.
Dr. Harrison was a very kind, community-minded person. His oldest daughter was one of my classmates in high school. He's the only family doctor that I had known. He would always take time to explain things and encourage me as a boy growing up. He said, "Always get me some good grades in school. You never know, you may have to replace me someday." He had a track record for always being an inspiration and encouraging students. Sometimes, if he brought his daughter 50 cents for lunch, many a day, if I or another student happened to be around, he'd give them a quarter or 50 cents too. He was pro-student, and pro-productive living. That was his legacy. Everybody knew him and loved him as a person who was always standing on the right side of promoting a better life for people, period. I'm told that in my early days, when there was an epidemic of pneumonia, Dr. Harrison had been called on by some of his white counterparts to go with them and consult on some of those problem cases, where lives would be saved. He was always ready to give of himself and his experience for the cause of people, of relieving suffering. Some of all these ideas and my attitude was influenced, I'm sure, by Dr. Harrison. He was just a kind gentleman.
But did he ever take part in any organizations like the NAACP?
No, not to my knowledge. In fact, when I was growing up, the NAACP was not even active in our town. He was always encouraging people, but from the standpoint of his own life. I guess it fell to me to advocate some of the other things.
You joined the Old North State Medical Society, you helped form the Pitt County Interracial Committee. What do you think changed to allow this more organized approach to activism later on, in your lifetime?
From my vantage point, I was on the state Good Neighbor Council, which
had a statewide impact. After Sanford's term ended, Governor Moore got
elected. He defeated Richardson Preyer, who was the heir apparent to
Terry Sanford. Everybody figured that Governor Moore would want to
destroy or let go this Good Neighbor Council. Luckily, there was a very
able activist in Raleigh named David Coltrane. He had some good rapport
with Dan Moore, and through his good offices, not only was the Good
Neighbor Council preserved, but we were able, through Coltrane's
influence with Governor Moore, to get legislation passed creating the
Human Relations Councils as we know them today. Under Dave Coltrane's
administration, there was a campaign to get
What kind of activities did the Good Neighbor and Human Relations Councils do?
On the local level, they were supposed to be involved in problem-solving where disputes or misunderstandings would come up, dealing with the problem of human relations or race relations. Besides trying to cure a problem that existed, more importantly, they were trying to anticipate things, and prevent them. So it was two-fold. I had always supported Jesse Harris, the young man who's been the head of the local Human Relations Council here in Greenville, and always supported those activities. After I had moved on out, about six years ago, they established a Best-Irons Humanitarian award. The first year, they gave the plaque to me and Dr. Malene [Irons]. Since then, every year they've had a banquet and picked out somebody in the community who's done a lot to promote human relations. I say human relations, because it goes beyond race relations. We're just as pro doing whatever is right, no matter what race you are. That's more or less the thrust of what they're doing now. I served on the state group for about 14 years.
I'd like to go back to the Old North State Medical Society. You said right after you joined the organization in '54, there were a lot of discussions about trying to integrate the then all-white North Carolina Medical Society. Do you know why they started talking about that then, or what brought it up? Was it in response to the Brown vs. Board decision, or other national events?
There was a movement toward integration. There were some people who were saying there's no use of having two medical societies. Now that we've offered you total full membership, there's no need for the Old North State. Our position was then, and still is, there is a need for the Old North State because in our programs and promotional work, some of the things which concern us are not covered or even considered by the predominantly white state medical society. They don't even recognize, in a lot of cases, some of the concerns that we have.
Can you give some examples of some of the things the Old North State Medical Society does that the North Carolina Medical Society doesn't? What were some of the differences?
One of the main things was, our population base has more indigent, and a
greater degree of people who cannot pay for the services.
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[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
Aside from the scientific part of medicine, we've got to deal with the problems of attitudes and getting to the doctor in time so you're in a preventive mode, and all of those things. Whereas our white counterparts don't. One thing that really proves my thesis is that now, since we are desegregated, we have acceptance of minority kids going to all the various schools, UNC, Duke and everywhere else. When those young doctors finish, they have no concept of the social approach, or the realities of life and practicing. So often, I have observed young doctors in the last ten years being more oriented toward those pictures of Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, Cleveland, and all them boys. Where they are more concerned about the dollar return than about the relief of pain and suffering. Where I was trained at Meharry, we often got reference to the acceptance of the realities of life and the demands of your profession. I remember Dr. Walker, who was the chief of medicine and a surgeon too, for a long time during my tenure at Meharry—he would always say, "There is something in your horizon of medicine that goes beyond the color green"—that's the money. "There are certain things you'll find you've got to do." And the likes of Dr. Walker would point out the fact that be it as it may, there are some things about the attitudes and the realities of our part of the population that you just don't get in school. When those young doctors finish Duke and Chapel Hill and whatnot, it shows. For example, the episode where Charles Drew got in a wreck up here near Burlington and got messed around for a while. I wasn't there, but I heard two accounts. One said that the nature of his injuries was such that he would have died and he couldn't have been saved. The other account was that getting him sent from a white hospital over to another hospital, the time frame contributed to his death. The point that my training and my doctors would always say, you have to remember that the problem of racial tension, the fact that you may not be looked on as you should be, and may not be accorded the privileges that you should be, that's something realistically that you've got to deal with. Life is not going to always be pie in the sky. All I'm saying, Karen, is that our training and background gives us a different perspective than the training over yonder.
How did the training you received at Meharry prepare you to deal with the kind of obstacles that you would have to face? Can you think of any specific examples?
In general, our doctors and professors would always mention what they
called the realities of life and living. I have seen many instances
where here is a person of color with the same academic preparation, but
a preference, sometime I think it may even be unconscious, is given to
the white guy over the black guy. That's a force of that racial barrier
that has never been completely erased, even in these days of
desegregation. I wouldn't go back to the segregated pattern, not for
anything in the world. I know to start with that I may get some things
leveled against me that a white person doing the same thing, they might
not even bother. That's the people who are sitting up at the top in
administration.
This was the credentials committee of the hospital?
Yes. In other words, when I got this certified letter from the chief [of staff], I went over and got all the charts straightened up. I was feeling kind of good when I met with the committee, because I could report that all the charts were complete. When I got there, the chief of staff read off to me that fine print. In all the years I had been here, it had never come to my attention that if that credentials committee elected to do it, they could send the offending doctor back through the whole process, suspend you from the staff and make you re-apply all over again. [There were] six members on this committee, and when the chairman of the credentials committee recommended that I be dismissed from the staff and given the option of no longer being on the staff or re-applying, there were four out of the six who stood up and defended me. When he first got the floor, he said, "Let me ask Dr. Best a question. Are your charts complete now, do you have any delinquent charts?" I said no sir, I did not. They went on through the discussion, each person made his comments, and they took a vote. There were five people other than the chief, and just one sided with the chief to censure me with suspension and having to re-apply. When the meeting was over, it was four to two, so that killed the whole thing so far as I was concerned. But the one person who sided with the chief, as I was getting in my car, he came over and said, "Andrew, it was nothing against you as a person, but we have this affiliation prospect with the medical school that's being worked out, and we've got to be careful about our rules and regulations so far as the quality of our care." Which was a smokescreen, which I knew. I said, "You have a right to your opinion." And I'm burning on the inside, but I was able to be calm on the outside.
So you thought being called before the committee was racially motivated?
Sure, I have no doubt.
Did you know other physicians who had had done the same thing, and had not been called before the committee?
It was just common knowledge, if you were to be notified, whatever I'm doing at that particular time, just stop and get that done. That had been a very effective mechanism for [getting] doctors [to keep] their charts in line. But I had a feeling, and I could be mistaken, that this particular person was subjecting me to the fine print of the regulation.
Was he one of the six that you felt were unconvinceable?
Yeah, he was one of them. He just disagreed with my activity in the community. This same person was a cardiologist. There was a patient of mine, a dentist, who had more white patients than black. He had some chest pains, and I felt like he was having a heart attack, and sent him to the emergency room, and indeed his cardiogram showed that he did have a myocardial infarc. I called on the group where this particular man was the head, and called his newest partner, who had seen this dentist when he was doing a fellowship at Chapel Hill. So I called on him to consult with me, and this gentleman said to me in no uncertain terms that this doctor did not accept or reject patients for their firm. So I said, "This man was Dr. So-and-so's patient when he was a fellow at Chapel Hill before he joined your firm." He said, "Makes no difference. I will not see him, and no member from my group will see him." So I called another internal medicine specialist, and he very kindly came to see [the patient]. But I knew this particular person had the history of being one of those rednecks who disagreed with this man's reputation for servicing the white part of the population. It was true that his name had been linked romantically with a couple of white ladies, so that was just burning this man up. That substantiated what he was doing to me on these charts.
Did the incident with the dentist happen before what you told me about the charts?
No. That happened way after. But the incident with the dentist verified for me the fact that this man has racial animosities as a part of his heart. One of the things I tried to do in the context of human advancement is try never to show any adverse reaction where I am retaliating. I always have chosen to keep myself calm and on the positive side of it.
I would like to ask some further questions about the Old North State Medical Society. I've read the North Carolina Medical Journal, and the single biggest issue that was prominent throughout the '40s and '50s was that they were totally against socialized medicine. I sense that the Old North State Medical Society's position on that was very different.
Very different.
Could you talk about the Old North State Medical Society's position on government funded health initiatives, and maybe give some examples?
The Old North State is a constituent part of the National Medical
Association, [whose] position was always pro-Medicare. When the
proposition came up, we've always been pro-Medicare. All of the National
Medical Association's constituent societies, the Old North State being
one, supported that concept. Now the AMA [American Medical Association],
our counterpart, of which the North Carolina Medical Society's part,
they were arrayed against Medicare. But mind you, when the law finally
passed, [after] President Kennedy started it and President Johnson
followed him, the AMA jumped right in to have some of its
representatives in the key positions of
Were any NMA people chosen for those administrative positions as well?
No, not in those original, early days. That made us, so far as the
benefits were concerned—there were many minority physicians treating
that part of the population that was under Medicare. [They] were able to
get some compensation for people [for whom] we'd previously not been
able to. Now that was important to us. But as far as making the fine
lines and rules and regulations that they went by in applying the law,
we still were at a loss. On the presidential level, President Bush
appointed Dr. Sullivan from Morehouse in Atlanta in his cabinet as the
Health and Human Services secretary. The present president, Clinton, has
done what I conceive to be a very fair and equitable job in appointing
people to positions, especially in the area of human services. It's
unfortunate that Dr. Jocelyn Elders got asked to resign because of a
statement that she made, which to me was very unfortunate and ill-timed.
When President Clinton nominated Dr. Henry Foster, who was a good friend
of mine at Meharry, and I've known him for years and years, Dr. Foster
got caught up in that political meatgrinder, where the publicans were
against the sinners. He didn't get confirmed, not because of the man's
stature or abilities, but because he got caught in that political
meatgrinder. Which was unfortunate for the whole country, as far as his
being able to do something is concerned. The National Medical
Association has been in the forefront of medical progress and a system
of health care delivery where the uninsured and underinsured patient is
taken care of, too. We've been right on the cutting edge of that
philosophical stance. Whereas the American Medical Association has been
laid back, and against it. When I was active in the North Carolina
Medical Society—I'm still a member, but I'm an emeritus life member, so
I don't get involved in some of the day to day things like I did when I
was active—they've always raised the specter of "we don't want
socialized medicine." Well, when you ask somebody, "Give me the details
of what socialized medicine is, and what it means, and how it's going to
work," they're not able to tell you what it is. Here again, when the
North Carolina Medical Society was one of the groups that was arrayed
against the establishment of a medical school here in Greenville, only
two professional groups in medicine supported that concept, and that was
the Old North State, and the North Carolina Academy of Physicians.
Chapel Hill, the North Carolina Medical Society, Duke, Bowman-Gray were
all against it to the point that when the Board of Governors, and I was
there as a member of the sub-committee on Medical Education—I was thick
in the fight of all of this stuff. After the sub-committee got split
down the middle, and the chairman didn't want, I'm sure, to break the
tie, they engineered a [solution]. They said, "Let's employ a group of
distinguished medical educators, and let them help decide." So we
created that group at [UNC system President] Friday's insistence, and
brought five medical educators in, who went about the state for
One major objection that the North Carolina Medical Journal consistently raised was that physicians, as a group, were concerned that taking control away from physicians and giving it to the government or some third party, that interfering with the physician-patient relationship would be detrimental to providing health care. Did the Old North State Medical Society ever address those kinds of concerns?
From the Old North State's perspective, we didn't look at it that way. [The way] we looked at it, when you look at the historical reality of what had been happening, here was a whole group of people who were unserved and underserved. Whatever it took, even if it took giving up a little bit of authority or preference, we've got to design some measure to get these other people under the umbrella. That was more or less the attitude of the Old North State. In taking the control away from the group that had been more or less in charge, if the group hadn't done anything in a hundred years, how can we explain continuing to let them do the same thing by using that [argument] as a veil to hide behind? That in essence is what the Old North State was saying, that we've got to do something to unlock some of these doors to the people who had been locked out.
So their position was that even though physicians, both black and white, provided charity care to patients, that it wasn't enough.
That's right. It wasn't enough. And there were too many people who were not under the umbrella. We still may miss some, but we want to tighten up the net, so you won't have so many falling through the net.
You've mentioned Medicare and desegregating the North Carolina State Medical Society as major concerns. Were there any other issues that the Old North State Medical Society was particularly active in?
The keystone of our approach has been delivering care to the advantaged as well as the disadvantaged. I would say that we of the Old North State believe, and I think history will bear us out, that we have been far more of an advocate for the disadvantaged than our white counterpart. For that, I think we're justly proud.
Of course, I'm sure y'all were involved in efforts to open medical training and education that might be considered professional self-interest and humanitarian interest combined.
Yes.
I realize this may have been occurring when you were out of the state, but do you remember anything about the discussions over the desegregation of the UNC Medical School? The first black student was admitted in April of 1951. His name was Edward Diggs.
I remember the name.
And then James Slade was the second two years later.
And somewhere along the line, Lawrence Zollicoffer came along. They have a lecture named after him. Zollicoffer went into pediatrics in Maryland. I don't know what he died of, but he contracted some disease and died.
Dr. Cochran mentioned him. Didn't he die fairly young, at about 45?
Yes, he was young. Lawrence was a classmate of mine at A & T in physics, and he was a physics whiz.
So you knew that he'd been admitted to the UNC School of Medicine?
Yeah, I knew, and he graduated from there. One among the early, I don't know whether the third or the fourth, it was not too long after.
One last question, and then I think that about wraps it up. Were you ever involved in any public health clinics, or was part of your practice involved with public health work?
I have worked in cooperation with the local health department. Sometimes I stand in on some of their clinics, especially their immunization clinics where the nurses are most likely in charge, but the needed the presence of a doctor if anything happened. I've always cooperated with the local health department and the health nurses that were going around.
But the majority of your practice has been private?
Private practice.
For twenty-some years, I was the only black physician in Pitt or Martin
counties, and my patient geographical area was Pitt, Martin, Lenoir,
Craven, Edgecombe, Wayne, all around. I enjoyed a pretty widespread
geographical area of people who would come in for family medicine.
Fortunately, and to my great relief, the number of doctors settling in
the area [has increased]. Now, we have three other practicing minority
physicians in town.
The presence of these other minority doctors has done a lot for me, because before, when I was here by myself, I didn't always have the luxury of coverage that I have now. There were certain of my white doctor friends who, for those twenty-some years, did a good job of covering for me. Nobody ever denied coverage if I said I'm going to a professional meeting. But if I said I just wanted to go down to the ocean and get lost for two or three days, somehow or another, the wife always had something she wanted them to do! I laughed about that, I'd make a joke about it. But the presence of minority doctors has made my life much more bearable.
So that started in maybe the late '70s?
Yeah, mm-hmm. Dr. Land has been here about 16 years now, and Dr. Arliss has been here maybe 15. I would say the early '80s is when some help came along.
That's about all my questions. Can you think of anything you wanted to add.
I don't think so. I've tried to give you a comprehensive overview, and maybe you can pick out a few things.
END OF INTERVIEW