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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 civil rights-era North Carolina, 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 civil rights-era North Carolina.
[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.
[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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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.
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