The Morehouse Mystique: Becoming a Doctor at the Nation's Newest African American Medical School

3 Building His Bike as He Rides It

chapter three Building His Bike as He Rides It At a press conference on the day of Louis W. Sullivan’s 1975 appointment to the position of dean of the Morehouse College Medical Education Program, President Hugh M. Gloster said, “We celebrate a tremendous triumph today, and we welcome you, Dr. Sullivan, for consenting to come and help make the Morehouse College Medical Education Program a reality.”1 Several prominent guests were at that press conference, including Arthur Richardson, the dean of Emory University, as well as Georgia’s U.S. senators, Herman Talmadge and Sam Nunn.2 Talmadge was a conservative senator, but he was not the ardent and vocal segregationist that his father had been. He was an astute politician, fully aware of the changing dynamics of the South and the influence of such figures as Martin Luther King Jr., U.S. Congressman Andrew Young, Joseph Lowery of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and others. Sam Nunn was a moderate to conservative Democratic senator from Georgia who tended to break with the party on social issues.3 According to Sullivan: “Talmadge and Nunn were supporting our school, which was quite profound. I, as a Black youngster growing up in Georgia, was quite familiar with Herman Talmadge’s father, Eugene Talmadge, with his red suspenders and his political discourse of segregation.”4 Eugene Talmadge served three terms as governor of Georgia during the 1930s and 1940s. A staunch supporter of Jim Crow, he conducted a purge of the state’s university system, removing a dean who he claimed was an integrationist and a Communist.5 His son Herman started his career with a similar approach , opposing the Brown v. Board of Education decision and writing a prosegregation book in 1955.6 But Herman Talmadge’s views evolved over time. The press conference was a sign of how much the South was changing, and of the interracial cooperation on which the medical school was built.7 Upon taking the position as dean, Sullivan said at the press conference: “I plan to do everything in my power to attract the best students, the best faculty, and to develop the best possible environment for teaching and learning. I am committed to finding new ways and models of training health professionals who can deliver quality medical care throughout the country.”8 Sullivan’s ad- 46 The Morehouse Mystique ministrative position was quite a change for a faculty researcher. No longer was he responsible merely for his own professional success, but for the growth and development of an entire group of physicians, students, and teachers. In his words, “an administrator gets his or her gratification in the long run in seeing the institution unfold and develop.”9 And Sullivan believed that his administrative role was all the more challenging, given the stigma that had been placed on Black institutions in the past. “I wanted to show the nation,” he said, “that Black institutions could operate with the same level of excellence as any other institution if given the resources. The problem with so many Black institutions is that they have been starved for resources.”10 Indeed, there is ample evidence that Black colleges received less support from corporations and foundations as well as from the federal and state governments.11 In Sullivan’s view, the school had multiple missions. First, it had to produce excellent physicians—people who would be great scientists. Second, as he noted above, it had to demonstrate that a Black institution could achieve as much as any other institution if given the resources. Third, it had to respond to the feeling that African Americans have a responsibility to put their shoulder to the wheel in order to make things happen. According to Sullivan: We as a nation have an unfortunate history of slavery, segregation, and discrimination , and all of us have been victimized by that, Whites as well as Blacks. But let’s get beyond that. Let’s really show that every member of our society, whether you are Press conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., November 1975. Left to right, Hugh Gloster, U.S. Senators Herman Talmadge and Sam Nunn, and Louis W. Sullivan. Building His Bike as He Rides It 47 Black, White, Hispanic, every member can contribute positively to make this a better society if given the chance and if given the resources. So that’s the larger story of Morehouse...