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Acknowledgments
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Acknowledgments I am pleased to acknowledge the assistance of numerous individuals in the preparation of Dr. Hereford’s autobiography. Historian Waymon E. Burke at the Huntsville branch of Calhoun Community College in Decatur, Alabama, who played a key role in helping Hereford produce his 1999 documentary A Civil Rights Journey, read an early draft of the manuscript and made many useful suggestions, as did William H. Goodson Jr., a Vanderbilt medical school graduate whose career in psychiatry overlapped Hereford’s years of practice in Huntsville and who was familiar with many of the people and events described in the book. Several other local physicians were willing to share their memories of medical practice in Madison County during the 1950s and 1960s, particularly Richard L. Lester, Milton Booth Peeler, William A. Kates, and the late Virgil M. Howie. I am indebted as well to the late Geneva Drake Whatley, a Meharry nursing graduate of 1944 and widow of the local black physician Harold Fanning Drake (1922–1979), whom I interviewed at her Huntsville home in July 1999. My former colleague at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), Andrew J. Dunar, author of several important studies in oral history, supported my application for sabbatical leave in 1997 in order to begin work on Alabama ’s African American physicians and as chair of the Department of History strongly encouraged my efforts over the years.The staff of UAH’s Salmon Library provided constant assistance in my search for materials, including Gary Glover, Linda K. Vaughan, Elizabeth Rose, and Rose Bridgeforth. My thanks also go to Ranee G. Pruitt, archivist in the Heritage Room of the Huntsville-Madison County Public Library, who helped me locate historic maps of Huntsville, and to Linda Bayer Allen, who served in the Planning Division of the city from 1976 to 2004 and shared her extensive knowledge of streets, historical structures, and locations of black neighborhoods before 1960. Mark H. Yokley, president of GW Jones & Sons, an engineering and land sur- x / Acknowledgments veying firm that has been producing Huntsville city maps since the nineteenth century, provided computer scans and permission to use the map for 1948. I especially want to thank Tim L. Pennycuff, assistant professor and university archivist at The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), who from the start has been supportive of my efforts to preserve the oral histories of African American physicians in the state. The UAB Medical Archives and the Lister Hill Library were among the first places I worked as I began to document the largely forgotten role that black doctors have played in Alabama’s history during the twentieth century. My thanks also go to A. J. Wright, associate professor and director of the Section on the History of Anesthesia in the Department of Anesthesiology Library of The University of Alabama at Birmingham , who for several years has been providing extensive Web-based documentation on Alabama’s black doctors before World War I and who generously shared information with me. Finally, I express my gratitude for the many excellent suggestions made by the readers who evaluated the manuscript for The University of Alabama Press and for the support and encouragement of the press’s staff. As always, I owe a special debt to my wife, Diane M. Ellis, who read the manuscript and made valuable suggestions and whose knowledge of local historic preservation helped me provide an accurate historical context for Hereford’s story. Jack D. Ellis [44.197.251.102] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 05:21 GMT) Beside the Troubled Waters ...