FOR the members of the National Medical Association, 95% of them Negro, President Johnson's unheralded visit to their annual convention last week was the most signal recognition their organization had witnessed in all its 73 years. The 2,800 delegates and their guests roared approval as the President listed among his "five new freedoms" the right of every citizen "to get all the education that he can absorb." Equally attractive was the declared "right of every American to as healthy a life as modern medicine can provide." The N.M.A. had won a different sort of recognition earlier in the week simply by meeting in Houston, where its presence at the Shamrock-Hilton Hotel, and even in its pool, elevated some eyebrows. "I don't know what the whites are scared of," said one Negro doctor. "These are their kind of people. There are more Toms here than on a turkey farm."
The delegate was unduly harsh. If Tomism was evident, so was a determined effort by Negro doctors to achieve equal status with white physicians. The delegates winced when a Black Nationalist woman guest lashed out: "We're two nations! If we weren't, you wouldn't be here now, because there wouldn't have to be two medical associations." She was right. The N.M.A. was founded in 1895 because the Negro was being neglected by the American Medical Association, many of whose constituent county and state societies were lily-white. Still true to form, the A.M.A. sent no official representative to the N.M.A. convention.
Culture Block. For the Negro doctor in the U.S. today, this is a pinprick hardly worth remarking. He bears the scars of many deeper cuts. He is accustomed to being rebuffed by medical schools, by medical colleagues (especially hospital staff members and administrators), by medical societies, by white patients—and even by black patients, many of whom think a Negro doctor is good enough for their sniffles but not for their major complaints. The cumulative effect is that the number of black doctors, relative to the Negro population, is declining. The nation has only 7,000 Negro physicians. If there were proportionately as many as there are white doctors for white people, the number would be 30,000.
The situation in many parts of the U.S. is worse now than it was a couple of generations ago. In those days, says Chicago's Dr. Arthur G. Falls, 67, there was no discrimination in Northern schools. "I was born and raised in Chicago, and got a fine education in the public school system. I had no trouble getting into Northwestern and going on through its medical school. The decline of the Chicago public school system came later. Today, many Negroes wishing to go to medical school are ill prepared educationally. Even to be considered, the Negro must be in the top 1% of his class."