A Black Physician's Struggle for Civil Rights: Edward C. Mazique, M.D. (review)

The inspiring theme of personal success against the odds gives unity to sociologist Florence Ridlon's biographical study of prominent physician, civic leader, and civil rights activist Edward C. Mazique. From his childhood spent on cotton plantations near Natchez, Mississippi, Mazique rose to become one of the most respected physicians practicing in the nation's capital and the president of both the Washington, D.C., Medico-Chirugical Society and the predominantly black National Medical Association.

Ridlon's extensive use of lengthy direct quotations from the hours of recorded interviews she conducted with Mazique creates a work that is in many ways more a memoir than a traditional biography. The first two chapters, "Mississippi Roots" and "A Country Boy," explore the surprising rise of the Mazique family from pre–Civil War slavery to post–Civil War plantation ownership in the Natchez area. The book's presentation of the entrepreneurial character and high expectations of Mazique's father and grandfather offers insight into the influences that enabled young Edward Mazique to move beyond the limited horizons of Mississippi's racial caste system to gain a private high school education at all-black Natchez College in a town where, in 1929, no public high schools were open to black students.

This study also points to the high idealism and inspirational power that many students experienced in African-American higher education in the 1930s. Arriving virtually penniless at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Mazique found disciplined and demanding but sympathetic administrators and faculty who helped him find the work-study opportunities needed to sustain his studies. Morehouse faculty and administrators also pointed Mazique and his classmates to suffering humanity's need for educated leaders. After earning a bachelor's degree in science from Morehouse in 1933 and a master's in education from Atlanta University in 1934, Mazique took a faculty post at all-black Forsythe State Teacher's and Agricultural College. His duties at Forsythe College included extensive travel for a state program to help minimally prepared teachers improve delivery of the science curriculum in Georgia's segregated black secondary schools. After three years at Forsythe, Mazique entered the Medical College of Howard University in 1937.

Ridlon's discussion of Mazique's experience of segregated medical education at Howard is limited to five pages, of which almost three are direct quotes from interview materials mostly illustrating the means by which an enterprising student financed his studies. However, the book's title tells us that its focus is civil rights. Thus the author devotes a full chapter, titled "Being a Doctor Is Not Enough," to what might be called Mazique's civil rights awakening from 1948 to 1951. In an era when most of the nation's hospitals were closed to black patients, interns, and physicians and when the predominantly white American Medical Association allowed its local chapters to exclude black practitioners, Mazique gradually came to see the struggle for civil rights as a personal imperative and a natural part of his commitment to good medical practice and public health. As a contribution to medical history, the book has strength in its detailed treatment of Mazique's central role in the struggle for desegregation of D.C.-area hospitals, medical societies, and social agencies.

Growing respect for Mazique's integrity as a physician and citizen activist led to his election as president of the predominantly black National Medical Association in 1959. In contrast to his colleagues in the AMA leadership, Mazique used the platform of the presidency of the National Medical Association to move his organization and its members to greater social and political involvement. Mazique's personal endorsements and public testimony played an important role in the final enactment of the federal Medicare program.

One of the book's lengthier chapters deals with Mazique's work in coordinating health services for the 1968 Poor People's Campaign, a Washington demonstration that involved...