Local white doctors received instructorships from the medical school. They volunteered their time to check patient evaluations of third and fourth year medical students and work with the medical school and hospital staff. Many of them were newly licensed like my father. There was no guarantee or indication that he would ever get an instructorship. He refused to give up; he kept coming to the clinic each day. After a while, when none of the white doctors were available, my father was permitted—on those occasions—to supervise students.

ome of his white colleagues were cordial and welcoming, immediately treating him as an equal. But many—faculty and practitioners, alike— were cold and distant, if not openly disdainful.

In the gynecology clinic, my father was regarded tenuously, at best. When he first started going to the clinic as an observer, he would be asked to leave the room before gynecological exams. At one point, he stopped going to the gynecology clinic altogether, because of the embarrassment he suffered, and, for awhile, only attended the general medical clinic.

Eventually, one incident changed the way he was received in the gynecology clinic. He made a controversial diagnosis that won him everyone's respect, even from those who gave it only grudgingly.