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University of Georgia Press

Chapter Title: Edith Mae Irby Jones (1927–) “Brilliant… Black Pilgrim, Proud Pioneer” and the Integration of the University of Arkansas School of Medicine Chapter Author(s): YULONDA EADIE SANO

Book Title: Arkansas Women Book Subtitle: Their Lives and Times Book Editor(s): Cherisse Jones-Branch, Gary T. Edwards Published by: University of Georgia Press. (2018) Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1vhtrh3.16

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Edith Mae Irby Jones

(1927-)

"Brilliant... Black Pilgrim, Proud Pioneer" and the Integration of the University of

Arkansas School of Medicine

YULONDA E A D I E SANO

In 1948, nine years prior to the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, by a group of students known as the Little Rock Nine, a more peaceful desegregation took place. On September 6,1948, Edith Mae Irby be- came the first African American student to attend the University of Arkansas School of Medicine (now the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences). A Life magazine photographer captured her standing alone in the hallway with book and binder in hand, while white students nearby pretended to socialize but surreptitiously watched her closely. Although Henry Clay Chenault, vice president of the medical school, had proclaimed that Edith would be just like any other medical student in her class, the existence of Jim Crow laws and cus- toms ensured that hers was a unique experience.1

Jim Crow limited educational opportunities for African Americans in the South, and secondary schools, public colleges, and universities were all segre- gated by race. However, in early 1948, the University of Arkansas board of trust- ees broke with this southern "tradition" and decided to accept black students in its professional and graduate schools. In the spring semester, the School of Law enrolled its first black student, Silas Hunt, and in the fall semester the School of Medicine became the first all-white medical school in the South to admit a black student. Out of the 230 applicants—including 11 African Americans— who had applied for that fall term, the university accepted 90 white students and a lone black student, Edith Mae Irby, a resident of Hot Springs, Arkansas,

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and a graduate of Knoxville College in Tennessee. Enrolling in medical school was not the last time Edith would be a "first" as she has continued to break ra- cialized and gendered barriers throughout her life.2

Edith's story is a compelling narrative of persistence, determination, and faith that belongs in the discourse of the long civil rights movement. She sought to become a physician as a part of the fulfillment of a childhood dream and re- fused to be deterred from her goal. Without fanfare or legal counsel, she applied to the University of Arkansas School of Medicine. She committed the radical act of asserting her citizenship and her right to equal treatment under the law at a time when African Americans were at best seen as second-class citizens. In addition, she used her fame within the African American community to be a part of the movement that urged black people not to accept the status quo and to demand equal facilities.

Edith Mae Irby was born on December 23,1927, in Mayflower, Arkansas. She and her siblings, Juanita and Robert Jr., lived with their parents, Robert Sr., a tenant farmer, and Mattie (Buice), a domestic worker. Between 1930 and 1934, the family experienced several tragedies. In 1930, the patriarch of the family died. Edith witnessed the unsuccessful attempts to resuscitate her father, who died from injuries he received while horseback riding. In January 1931, after Robert Sr.'s death, the family was evicted from the farm where they lived and moved in with Mattie's father, who was known as Grandpa Buice, and his wife, whom they called Miss Gallic. In 1932, Mattie Irby and her children moved to Conway, Arkansas. While in Conway, Edith was struck with rheumatic fever, which rendered her unable to walk for about eighteen months. Tragedy struck again when Edith's older sister, Juanita, who was then about twelve years old, died from typhoid fever during an outbreak in 1933. A physician had come to treat Juanita once at the Irby home, but due to the family's inability to pay, the doctor did not return for a follow-up visit. Edith maintained that Juanita could have survived if the family had been able to afford a doctor's care. She recalled, "My sister literally bled to death because there was no help, there was no hospital, and there were no doctors to give her any kind of medical atten- tion." Soon after Juanita's death, Grandpa Buice died. These deaths during her childhood, especially her sister's, encouraged Edith to become a physician, "and I was going to see all children" regardless of their family's ability to pay. There was one bright spot during the family's stay in Conway; Mattie Irby gave birth to a baby boy named Louis.3

The Irby family left Conway and moved to Hot Springs. There, Edith and her siblings attended segregated schools, and she graduated from Langston High School in 1944. Although she was offered a scholarship to the state-supported

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Edith Mae Irby Jones 225

college for African Americans, Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical and Normal College (AM&N), she decided to attend Knoxville College, a small, historically black Presbyterian school in Knoxville, Tennessee. Her favorite high school teacher, whom she consistently referred to as Mrs. Mary Long Martin, taught English and Latin and had attended Knoxville College; Edith was convinced that an education at a private college would be more prestigious.4

During the summer before college, Edith worked as a typist at Aldens, a mail-order company in Chicago, Illinois, where she lived with relatives identi- fied only as Aunt Willa B. and Uncle Chester, while saving money for college. By the time she bought new clothes and paid for her ticket to Knoxville from Chicago, however, she only had $60, not enough to cover the tuition of $300. But her confidence in herself and her abilities was unwavering. When she was about ten years old, she babysat for the family of Dr. Ellis, a white physician in Hot Springs whose full name is unknown. Dr. Ellis's mother, who became quite fond of Edith, encouraged her to complete her education and go on to college. Even if she did not have money, the woman stressed, "somebody will give you money." This prediction was fulfilled at Knoxville. After a registrar informed her that no one could make provisions for students without funds except the president of the college, Dr. William Lloyd Imes, Edith went to see him. By the end of their meeting, she had secured a job as an assistant to Imes's secretary in return for her tuition.5

Having majored in chemistry, biology, and physics, Edith graduated with honors from Knoxville College in 1948. Before leaving Tennessee, she took the Professional School Aptitude Test (the precursor to the Medical College Ad- mission Test) to qualify for medical school. She returned to Chicago, where she worked at Aldens again. She also enrolled in clinical psychology classes at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Most African Americans who pursued a medical career in the late 19408 attended one of the two historically black medical colleges, Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, or Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, D.C. Edith applied to twelve medical schools, including the University of Chicago, Northwestern, Howard, Meharry, and the University of Arkansas. At the time, she was unaware that Arkansas did not accept black students. In fact, one-third of all the medical schools in the country did not admit African American students.6

At the University of Arkansas, located in Fayetteville, racial exclusion was a matter of custom rather than law. It is a land-grant institution that was chartered in 1871 as Arkansas Industrial University, and the board of trustees decided that it would be open to all Arkansans without regard to race. Indeed, records indi- cate that two African American students enrolled when the university opened

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in 1872. In 1873, Branch Normal College (which became Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical and Normal College in 1927 and the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff in 1972) was chartered to educate black students. Although the University of Arkansas board of trustees did not formally rescind the decision to accept black students, by the end of Reconstruction black students were no longer at- tending that institution.7

Edith credited the vice president of Knoxville College with getting her into the University of Arkansas. He supported her desire to study medicine and provided her with a strong letter of recommendation. She learned about her acceptance into the medical school not by letter but by a phone call from Time magazine at her aunt and uncle's home. Based on the medical school's criteria for admis- sion, she was ranked twenty-eighth among the incoming class in 1948. She had also been accepted by the University of Chicago and Northwestern. Many of the medical schools on her preferred list had tuition in excess of $10,000, but the tu- ition at the University of Arkansas was only $500. "Now, mind you," she empha- sized, "I didn't have any money to go to medical school." Nor did her mother have the financial wherewithal to finance her education. Edith had no more money to attend the University of Arkansas than she had when she enrolled in Knoxville College. "In fact," she asserted, "I didn't have as much." Thus, her decision was "the most sensible and economical thing." In addition, the medical school, lo- cated in Little Rock, was only fifty miles from her mother's home in Hot Springs.8

Prior to the beginning of the academic year, Edith returned to Arkansas where Hot Springs residents—both black and white—contributed money to as- sist the widow's daughter who had been accepted to medical school. People col- lected money for the "Fund for Edith Irby" on Central Avenue in Hot Springs. There were church fundraisers for Edith, and some supporters even sent her coins in the mail. One local club owner drove her from Hot Springs to Little Rock for registration in style. She arrived on campus in a "big, long, white Ca- dillac" with "a bag full of dollar bills, half dollars, quarters, nickels and dimes," the money collected to pay her $500 tuition.9

The donations covered her tuition, but Edith was unprepared to pay the labo- ratory fee, which was an additional fifty dollars. Fortunately, a friend had told her about Daisy Bates, the co-owner of the black weekly newspaper in Little Rock, the Arkansas State Press, that was considered "the militant voice of black community protest." Later, Bates became a national figure as the president of the Arkansas State Conference of Branches of the National Association for the Ad- vancement of Colored People and for her support of the Little Rock Nine during the 1957-1958 school year. When Edith went to Bates's office, she introduced herself and explained her financial situation. Bates gave her the money that she

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Edith Mae Irby Jones 227

needed to complete registration. It was not until years later that Edith found out that the money Bates had given her was Bates's last fifty dollars. Thereafter, Bates continued to give her money for books, supplies, and personal items.10

Edith could be characterized as a bit naive when she applied to the University of Arkansas. Having grown up in Arkansas attending segregated schools, she was certainly aware of Jim Crow laws and customs, but she never considered that African American students were not allowed to attend the university. Her goal was neither to desegregate nor to change laws; it was simply to do what was necessary to obtain an education. She explained, "I had spent my whole life get- ting ready to go to medical school," and she refused to allow segregation, money, or anything else to stop her. Of course, there was some trepidation about being the first black student at the School of Medicine, but Edith was determined. She saw medicine as her best opportunity to help other African Americans.11

Edith's enrollment took place in a context of increasing civil rights activity, which had begun in the late 19308 and accelerated in the early 19408. Black students were asserting their rights to attend state public universities for gradu- ate and professional education, and the NAACP had assisted them through its Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which became a separate entity in 1940. In 1938, the organization had successfully argued on behalf of Lloyd L. Gaines, an African American resident of Missouri who applied to the law school at the University of Missouri, only to be denied admission because the university did not accept black students. The University of Missouri had the only law school in the state. The university offered to pay the tuition for Gaines at an out-of- state institution, but he sought court action to force the university to admit him. Missouri's decision was upheld in the state court but overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. In Missouri ex rel Gaines v. Canada the Court ruled that Mis- souri had violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In the absence of a state-supported school of law for black people, Missouri was required to admit Gaines. Thus, states had to guarantee equal access to a legal education for both black and white citizens.12

Even after the success of the Gaines case, southern states continued to circum- vent equal access to education for black people. In an effort to maintain segre- gated institutions, they provided black students with stipends to enroll in out- of-state universities for graduate classes not available at state-supported black colleges. In 1941, Arkansas had no such plan when Scipio A. Jones, an African American lawyer from Little Rock, approached the dean of the law school re- questing that the university pay for tuition for his client, Prentice A. Hilburn, a student at Howard University. Nevertheless, the university ultimately provided $134.50 for Hilburn s tuition, thereby postponing a decision on desegregation.

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Two years later, the state passed Arkansas Legislative Act 345, providing tuition money for black students who pursued graduate studies unavailable at Arkan- sas AM&N at out-of-state institutions. Black students were eligible to receive as much as $312 per academic year with a maximum distribution of $5,000, which, ironically, was subtracted from AM&N'S funds.13

In another victory for desegregation, Sipuel v. Board of Regents of the Univer- sity of Oklahoma—decided in January 1948—the Supreme Court ruled that the university had to admit Ada Lois Sipuel. In 1946, Sipuel, a graduate of Langston University, had applied to the University of Oklahoma College of Law. In an attempt to comply with the ruling in the Gaines case, the state hastily set up the Langston University School of Law, and argued that this makeshift pro- fessional school qualified as equal access to education. However, the Supreme Court disagreed, siding with Sipuel and the NA AGP and requiring the University of Oklahoma to admit her.14

The success of the NAACP'S court cases may have had an impact on the University of Arkansas's decision to desegregate its professional and graduate schools. When Silas Hunt applied to the University of Arkansas School of Law, Dean Robert Leflar wanted to avoid an equal protection lawsuit. In January 1948, Governor Benjamin Travis Laney proposed creating a regional gradu- ate school for African Americans with help from surrounding states. He urged black leaders to support his plan and a gradual end to segregation. This plan, which would have maintained segregation for the time being, was not well received. Leflar argued that admitting black students but providing separate teaching facilities for them was the better option.15

In the spring of 1948, Silas Hunt became the first black student since Re- construction to attend the University of Arkansas. He had begun his college career at Arkansas AM&N, but his education was interrupted by his military service during World War II. After his tour of duty, he returned to complete his degree and graduated in December 1947.16 William Harold Flowers, an African American attorney from Pine Bluff who was president of the Arkansas State Conference of NAACP Branches in 1948, advised Hunt on his attempt to enter the University of Arkansas. Although Hunt was admitted to the university, he was not allowed to attend classes with white students. To maintain segregation, professors taught him in a basement classroom alone. Ironically, a number of white students began attending Hunt's separate classes to take advantage of the more favorable student-to-faculty ratio. He was also excluded from the law li- brary and public bathrooms. Hunt obtained his library books through a white intermediary, and the dean permitted Hunt to use his private bathroom. Hunt never completed his law degree. Failing health caused him to withdraw from the

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Edith Mae Irby Jones 229

university in July 1948, and he never resumed his coursework. Diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis, he died in April 1949 at the O'Reilly Veterans Hospital in Springfield, Missouri.17

While black students' entry into the law school at the University of Arkan- sas involved some legal wrangling with the administration, Edith Irby's entry into the medical school took place without any such negotiations. Her admis- sion, she contended, "had nothing to do with civil rights. Absolutely, absolutely none." As civil rights advocates and physicians from around the country reacted to Edith's admission, however, it was clear that many regarded it as a watershed. For example, an August 1948 editorial in the Baltimore Afro-American asserted that Edith's admission was "another turning point in the educational history of the South" and declared that "the end of segregation in education, particu- larly upon the graduate level, is at hand." It may not have been Edith's intent to become a civil rights icon or to break racialized and gendered barriers, but her acceptance and entrance into the University of Arkansas cemented that legacy.18

The first black students on all-white campuses often experienced similar challenges: social isolation; exclusion from on-campus housing, libraries, uni- versity facilities, and activities; exclusion from or segregation within classrooms and cafeterias; and segregated restrooms. Like Silas Hunt, Jackie Shropshire, who entered law school at the University of Arkansas in the same semester that Edith started medical school, had classes in which he received individual instruction. However, he also shared classes with white students in which his desk was separated by a wooden railing. The railing was eventually removed, but separate areas for studying and dining persisted.19 For the most part, the black law students described a grudging acceptance of their presence on cam- pus, but George W. B. Haley, who joined Shropshire in law school in the fall of 1949, recalled openly hostile encounters as well. Haley confided to his brother, the writer Alex Haley, that he was told to "go back to Africa," was called racial epithets, and even had urine thrown at him. On one occasion, the law school's black "pioneers" found a hangman's noose in their shared study room.20

Most white students at the medical school appeared to be supportive of, or at least indifferent to, Edith's presence. In the late 19408, many of the university's professional students were veterans of World War II who were eager to com- plete their educations and begin their careers. In contrast to Fayetteville, with its small black population, Little Rock's black population was much more signifi- cant. This may explain why there was more open aggression toward the African American students in Fayetteville. While Edith did not experience much ra- cialized hostility from the students at the university, she noted that some male students resented the women for taking the positions that rightfully "belonged"

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to deserving male students. Nevertheless, Edith and her white female class- mates, Mary E. Arthur and Mary E. Thompson, managed to form close relation- ships with other students as they studied together and supported one another through medical school.21

But Edith's time at the university was not free of Jim Crow restrictions. As with the law school in Fayetteville, bathroom facilities presented a "problem" for the administration. Prior to her enrollment, all of the students and faculty were white; therefore there was no need for separately labeled "white" and "colored" restrooms. Rather than allow her to use the women's restrooms on campus, the university provided a separate facility, with an unmarked door, for Edith's use.22

While there were no segregated spaces for Edith in the classroom, she was not permitted to eat in the cafeteria with her fellow students, although she was not required to sit with "the help." Instead, the university set aside a separate study room in the library, where she ate her meals. She remembered that the African American staff made this restriction into a pleasurable experience. They brought in fresh flowers daily and left notes saying "cWe love you. We love you.' Well, you know, who couldn't function under that?" Soon, white students began to join Edith in her private room for dining and studying. Although the university prevented Edith from eating in the cafeteria to preserve segregation, white students were allowed to sit in Edith's segregated space. Jim Crow laws and customs generally dictated what blacks could not do, but rarely, if ever, commented on what whites could not do.23

By applying to and being accepted by the University of Arkansas School of Medicine, Edith Irby became an icon whose story appeared in Ebony and Life magazines as well as in newspapers throughout the country. She used her status to encourage others to assert their constitutional rights as citizens. She wanted people to know that "no one should be forced to live deprived of some of the basic needs of life." After studying, she often had speaking engagements at night. She traveled to wherever there was an interested audience—"to the little churches and to the schools for rallies"—and she informed her audiences that they did not have to accept "separate but equal." They should demand bet- ter because separate was never equal. Community activists feared that if Edith's activities were discovered, she might be expelled from medical school, so they devised an elaborate subterfuge that involved shuttling her to speaking engage- ments in the back of a hearse from a local black-owned funeral home. A dif- ferent car was used to drive her to and from the funeral home.24

It was during one of Edith's speaking engagements that fellow Arkansas native M. Joycelyn Elders (nee Jones), who would become the fifteenth surgeon general of the United States in 1993, saw Edith Irby for the first time. Elders

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Edith Mae Irby Jones 231

was a student at Philander Smith College, a small, historically black Methodist school in Little Rock, when Edith came to speak on campus. Elders remem- bered, "Edith Irby cut a high profile" among African Americans in Arkansas. Not only was she "Hot Springs' pride and joy," but the entire black community was proud of her, which was evident from her repeated mentions in black news- papers.25 Hearing Edith Irby speak influenced Elders's career choice. While in high school, Elders had "hoped" she would be able to get a job at "Mr. Dillard's [department store]." Then, when she began college, she "had the vague idea that it would be nice to work in a lab," but a career in medicine was not something that she envisioned for herself. After all, she had never seen a doctor until she went to college, and "you can't be what you can't see." But after hearing Irby, she "knew with 100 percent certainty that I was going to medical school and be- come a doctor." After graduating from college and serving in the military, where she was trained as a physical therapist, Elders used her GI Bill funds to enroll in the University of Arkansas medical school in 1956.26

Edith read a poem that night at Philander Smith College, "The Ways" by John Oxenham. As Elders recalled it: "Some of us take the high road / Others take the low / And in between on misty paths / The rest walk to and fro." Elders stated, "I was captivated. I thought I had never seen anyone as beautiful or heard any- thing as moving. I didn't know about anybody else in that hall, but as for me, I knew what I was going to do. I was going to take the high road. All I could think of was that I wanted to be exactly like her and do exactly what she was doing."27

After her first year of medical school, Edith earned a scholarship to pay her tuition and expenses. By the time she graduated in June 1952, she had experi- enced more significant changes in her personal life. Her beloved mother, Mat- tie Irby, died in March 1950, during Edith's second year of school. A month later Edith married James B. Jones, Ph.D., a professor at Arkansas AM&N. The couple had met during the summer of 1949 when Edith worked on the campus of AM&N. Newspapers from around the country carried the news of her gradu- ation and upcoming internship at the university hospital in Little Rock, another first for an African American. By the time her internship began, some of the prior Jim Crow restrictions were relaxed. She was able to use the dining room along with the white students, professors, and staff. More important, during her clinical training, she treated both black and white patients.28

After her internship, Edith Irby Jones remained in Arkansas for six years, working at a "multiple-specialty" clinic in Hot Springs from 1953 to 1959. Dur- ing this time, she and her husband had two children. James commuted from Hot Springs to Pine Bluff, where he was the director of personnel and guidance at Arkansas AM&N, until he was offered a position as the associate dean of

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students at Texas Southern University. The family moved to Houston, where Edith did a residency in internal medicine at Baylor College of Medicine from 1959 to 1962. She was Baylor's first African American female resident and only the second African American overall, and there were still Jim Crow barriers to overcome. She completed the last three months of her residency at Freedmeris Hospital in Washington, D.C., because the hospital affiliated with Baylor pre- vented her from having access to all patients—white and black.29

Edith Irby Jones began her private practice in internal medicine in Septem- ber 1962, opening her office at 2601 Prospect Street in Houston's Third Ward, where she remained until retirement. By 1963, she was chief of cardiology at St. Elizabeth's Hospital and associate chief of medicine at Riverside General Hospital, originally a fifty-bed facility built in 1927 to serve the black population and known then as Houston Negro Hospital. She was also a clinical assistant professor at the Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Texas School of Medicine, all while maintaining a thriving private practice.30

Continuing to break barriers, in July 1985 she became the president of the National Medical Association (NMA), the largest professional organization rep- resenting African American physicians since 1895. Jones had been a member of the NMA since 1953 and had held high-profile leadership positions in the organization, but she was the first female president in the association's history. During her tenure, she focused on increasing access to health care for African Americans and other minorities, continuing education for health care profes- sionals, and growing the NMA membership.31 Although President Ronald Rea- gan's secretary of health and human services, Margaret Heckler, had announced that the nation's health as a whole had improved, and people were living longer, those statistics did not hold true for African Americans or for the poor. Jones introduced an initiative to improve health and racial disparities in morbidity and mortality—focusing on proper nutrition, adequate housing, and curbing detrimental activities like smoking and drug abuse. She argued that many of the diseases that impacted black people's health were exacerbated by poverty, neglect, racism, and stress.32

Jones was taking part in a historically (and contemporary) contentious debate by asking: "What is an individual's right in this country to health care?" She asserted that society should "assume responsibility for the health care for the indigent." She was critical of the U.S. health insurance system because the focus was on providing "service at the least cost" and making a profit. She con- tended that the NMA must be "the conscience for all providers of health care," as well as advocates for African American communities. Jones's NMA presidential farewell address echoed feelings that she had possessed since her sister Juanita

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died: "All must be free to dream and to have equal opportunities to have the resources of the world shared by all, especially the opportunity to have good health through adequate access to quality health care."33

Jones has been honored locally, nationally, and internationally for her work as a pioneer, physician, health care advocate, and philanthropist. The numerous accolades that she has received throughout her career illustrate her importance in the medical community and to both her home state of Arkansas and her adopted home of Texas. The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences now displays her portrait in the administration building, and the student chapter of the NMA is named for her. She was recognized by President Richard Nixon for her exemplary medical service. She was honored with Edith Irby Jones Day by the state of Arkansas in 1979 and the city of Houston in 1986. She is one of the founders of the Association of Black Cardiologists and was the American Society of Medicine's Internist of the Year in 1988. In 2001, Black Enterprise named her as one of the leading black physicians in America. Edith Irby Jones is also respected for her philanthropy. She was a charter member of Physicians for Human Rights. Because she believes that good fortune must be shared, she has funded scholarships for students. In addition to providing free medical ser- vices in her community, she has also set up health care clinics in both Haiti and Uganda. Jones was elected to the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in 1998. More re- cently, she was inducted into the College of Medicine Hall of Fame in 2004 and the Arkansas Women's Hall of Fame in 2015. Along with nine other medical and health care professionals, she was honored with a marker on the Arkansas Civil Rights Heritage Trail for her efforts to bring about racial equality in Arkansas.34

Jones worked well into her eighties, but has now retired. She rarely reveals any negative feelings about her experiences at the University of Arkansas or discusses the impact of racism on her life, but in one of her NMA presidential columns she wrote, "I have observed discrimination in all its forms—blatant and subtle." She handled racial affronts and the pressures of medical school with "quiet dignity." Her way of coping was not to "think about the difficulty." Edith Mae Irby Jones succeeded in spite of the obstacles of racial segregation and exclusion; her strength and persistence are inspirational. As James C. Kilgore, a friend from Hot Springs, wrote in a poem dedicated to her, she proved that no one would "place ceilings on [her] dreams."35

NOTES

i. Linda E. Brew, The Story of Edith Irby Jones, M.D. (N.p.: NRT Publication Company), 15 (this chapter's subtitle derives from page 49); "Edith Irby Goes to School," Life, January 31, 1949, 33;

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W. David Baird, Medical Education in Arkansas, 1879-1978 (Memphis, Tenn.: Memphis State University Press, 1979), 211; Edith Irby Jones, interview by Scott Lunsford, April 3, 2006, tran- script, 141, Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, Special Collections, Univer- sity of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville, http://pryorcenter.uark.edu/interview.php?thisProject =Arkansas%2oMemories8cthisPronleURL=JONES-Edith-Irby8cdisplayName=Edith%2oJones8c thislnterviewee=228 (accessed October 25, 2017) (hereafter Jones, Pryor Center interview).

2. Judith Kilpatrick, "Desegregating the University of Arkansas School of Law: L. Clifford Davis and the Six Pioneers," Arkansas Historical Quarterly 68 (Summer 2009): 126-27; Baird, Medical Education in Arkansas, 211; Harrison Hale, University of Arkansas, 1871-1948 (Fayetteville: Univer- sity of Arkansas Alumni Association, 1948), 169.

3. Brew, Story of Edith Irby Jones, 1-6; Jones, Pryor Center interview, 6-18; Edith Irby Jones, interview by Kathleen Brosnan and Ramona Hopkins, September 18, 2007, transcript, Univer- sity of Houston Center for Public History, Houston, Tex., http://classweb.uh.edu/cph/tobearfruit /resources_oraltranscripts_jones_septO7.html (accessed October 25, 2017) (hereafter Jones, inter- view by Brosnan and Hopkins); Edith Irby Jones, interview by David Goldstein, December 18, 2007, transcript, Houston Public Library Digital Archives, Houston Oral History Project, http://digital .houstonlibrary.org/oral-history/edith-irby-jones.php (accessed May 31, 2012) (hereafter Jones, in- terview by Goldstein). Edith's younger brother, Louis, was born in 1933.

4. Jones, Pryor Center interview, 29, 70-72, 95. Brew, in her privately published biography of Edith Irby Jones, stated that Mrs. Martin was able to get a scholarship for Edith. However, Edith's interview with the Pryor Center provides the account presented in this chapter. See Brew, Story of Edith Irby Jones, 8.

5. Jones, Pryor Center interview, 51-54, 57-58, 72, 78, 94; Brew, Story of Edith Irby Jones, 8, n; P. J. Pierce, "Let Me Tell You What I've Learned": Texas Wisewomen Speak (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002), 140.

6. Jones, Pryor Center interview, 81, 98. 7. Gordon D. Morgan and Izola Preston, The Edge of Campus: A Journal of the Black Experience

at the University of Arkansas (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1990), 3,9; Robert A. Leflar, The First 100 Years: Centennial History of the University of Arkansas (Fayetteville: University of Ar- kansas Foundation, 1972), 273, 279; Pauli Murray, States'Laws on Race and Color (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997), 41-42.

8. Jones, Pryor Center interview, 81, 99-100, 104-5; Brew, Story of Edith Irby Jones, 11; "Edith Irby Revisited," Ebony, July 1963, 58; Jones, interview by Brosnan and Hopkins; Charles Whitaker, "Breakthroughs Are Her Business," Ebony, June 1986, 94.

9. Jones, Pryor Center interview, 18,108-9; Jones, interview by Goldstein; Jones, interview by Brosnan and Hopkins.

10. John A. Kirk, "The Little Rock Crisis and Postwar Black Activism in Arkansas," Arkansas Historical Quarterly 54 (Autumn 1997): 282, 285; Daisy Bates, The Long Shadow of Little Rock: A Memoir (New York: David McKay, 1962), 3-4, 47; Jones, Pryor Center interview, 109-10; Jones, interview by Goldstein.

11. Whitaker, "Breakthroughs Are Her Business," 94; "First Negro Ready for Graduation," Spokesman-Review (Spokane, Wash.), June 15,1952, 2; "Changing the Face of Medicine: Dr. Edith Irby Jones," National Library of Medicine, http://www.nlm.nih.gov/changingthefaceofmedicine /physicians/biography_i75.html (accessed May 9, 2014); Pierce, Let Me Tell You, 143; Jones, Pryor Center interview, 106.

12. Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 305 U.S. 337 (1938).

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Edith Mae Irby Jones 235

13. Guerdon D. Nichols, "Breaking the Color Barrier at the University of Arkansas," Arkansas Historical Quarterly 27 (Spring 1968): 5-6; Karen Kruse Thomas, "Dr. Jim Crow: The University of North Carolina, the Regional Medical School for Negroes and the Desegregation of Southern Medical Education, 1945-1960," Journal of African American History 88 (Summer 2003): 229; Mor- gan and Preston, Edge of Campus, 11; Leflar, First 100 Years, 278.

14. Sipuel v. Board of Regents, 332 U.S. 631 (1948); Robert Bruce Slater, "The First Black Gradu- ates of the Nation s 50 Flagship State Universities," Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 13 (Autumn 1996): 83.

15. Kilpatrick, "Desegregating," 127,129. 16. Nichols, "Breaking the Color Barrier," 16; Kilpatrick, "Desegregating," 132. 17. Kirk, "Little Rock Crisis," 278, 283, 285; Kirk, "'He Founded a Movement': W. H. Flowers, the

Committee on Negro Organizations and the Origins of Black Activism in Arkansas, 1940-1957," in The Making of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement, ed. Brian Ward and Tony Badger (New York: New York University Press), 38; John A. Kirk, "They S a y . . . New York Is Not Worth a D— to Them: The N A A C P in Arkansas, 1918-1971," in Long Is the Way and Hard: One Hundred Years of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, ed. Kevern Verney, Lee Sartain, and Adam Fairclough (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press), 225; Kilpatrick, "Desegregating," 132-34; Nichols, "Breaking the Color Barrier," 17.

18. Editorial, "Arkansas Falls in Line," Afro-American (Baltimore, Md.), August 31,1948, 4; Baird, Medical Education in Arkansas, 211.

19. Nichols, "Breaking the Color Barrier," 18, 20; Kilpatrick, "Desegregating," 134-35,152> Kirk, "Little Rock Crisis," 283; Leflar, First 100 Years, 284.

20. Alex Haley, "The Man Who Wouldn't Quit," Reader's Digest (March 1963): 54-59, http:// www.rd.com/true-stories/inspiring/george-haley-the-man-who-wouldnt-quit; Charles F. Robinson II and Lonnie R. Williams, Remembrances in Black: Personal Perspectives of the African American Experience at the University of Arkansas, 19405-2000$ (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press), 4; Kilpatrick, "Desegregating," 134,142.

21. Jones, Pryor Center interview, 139; Jones, interview by Brosnan and Hopkins; Jones, interview by Goldstein; Pierce, Let Me Tell You, 142; W. David Baird, Medical Education in Arkansas, 1879-1978 (Memphis, Tenn.: Memphis State University Press, 1979), 378; Brew, Story of Edith Irby Jones, 16.

22. Jones, Pryor Center interview, 116. 23. Ibid., 114-15; Pierce, Let Me Tell You, 141. 24. Jones, Pryor Center interview, 127-28,132; Jones, interview by Goldstein. 25. Joycelyn Elders and David Chanoff, Joycelyn Elders, M.D.: From Sharecropper's Daughter to

the Surgeon General of the United States of America (New York: William Morrow, 1996), 73; Jones, Pryor Center interview, 35. M. Joycelyn Jones married Oliver Elders during her last semester at the University of Arkansas. Despite having the same last name, she and Edith Irby Jones are not related.

26. Joycelyn Elders, interview by Scott Lunsford, February 14, 2008, transcript, 59, 66-67, 77> Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, Special Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville, http://pryorcenter.uark.edu/projects/Arkansas%20Memories/ELDERS -Joycelyn/transcripts/TRANS-ELDERS-Joycelyn-Memories-2oo8o2i4-FINAL.pdf (accessed Oc- tober 25, 2017); Elders and Chanoff, Joycelyn Elders, M.D., 77; Sara Lomax Reese, "Wisdom of the Elders," Health Quest 6 (October 31,1994): 29; Steve Barnes, "Dr. Elders: Dr. Elders," New York Times, October 15, 1989, 75. Elders asserted that the separate dining arrangement for black students still existed when she entered medical school at the University of Arkansas in 1956.

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2 3 6 Y U L O N D A E A D I E S A N O

27. Elders and Chanoff, Joycelyn Elders, M.D., 75. These are not the exact words to the poem; it

is the way Joycelyn Elders remembered them. Elders graduated from the University of Arkansas

School of Medicine in 1960 and became the first black chief resident at the university hospital.

28. Community of Faith, "Dr. Edith Irby Jones," http://www.vimeo.com/392iO733 (accessed

October 19, 2016); "First Arkansas Medical Graduate to Enter University Hospital," Journal of the

National Medical Association 44 (July 1952): 316; Jones, Pryor Center interview, 174; "First Negro

Ready for Graduation," 2; Brew, Story of Edith Irby Jones, 19-20.

29. "First Negro Ready for Graduation," 2; "Edith Irby Revisited," 52; Jones, Pryor Center interview,

154; "Dr. Edith Irby Jones," Arkansas Civil Rights Heritage Trail, http://www.arkansascivilrightsheritage

.org/dr-edith-irby-jones (accessed September 14, 2016). The couple had another child after moving to

Houston.

30. Jones, interview by Goldstein; Brew, Story of Edith Irby Jones, 26, 62; Jones, Pryor Center

interview, 157,180; "Edith Irby Revisited," 52, 54; "Riverside General Hospital History," http://www

.riversidegeneralhospital.org/getpage.php?name=houston&sub=About%2oUs (accessed July 5,

2014); Eugene B. Perry, "Riverside General Hospital: Formerly, Houston Negro Hospital, Houston,

Texas," Journal of the National Medical Association (May 1965): 258; "Jones, Edith Irby," in Marquis

Who's Who in the World (New Providence, N.J.: Marquis Who's Who, 2016).

31. Whitaker, "Breakthroughs Are Her Business," 91, 92; Brew, Story of Edith Irby Jones, 41; Edith

Irby Jones, "President's Column: Closing the Health Status Gap for Blacks and Other Minorities,"

Journal of the National Medical Association 78 (1986): 485; Jones, interview by Brosnan and Hop-

kins; Edith Irby Jones, "Farewell Address: Overcoming Challenges to Serve," Journal of the National

Medical Association 78 (1986): 808.

32. Edith Irby Jones, "President's Column: Preventing Disease and Promoting Health in the

Minority Community," Journal of the National Medical Association 78 (1986): 19-20; Jones, "Closing

the Health Status Gap," 488; Jones, "President's Column: Society's Responsibility for Health Care of

the Indigent," Journal of the National Medical Association 78 (1986): 95-96.

33. Jones, "Society's Responsibility," 96; Jones, "The Direct Relationship of Health Status to

Health Care" Journal of the National Medical Association 78 (1986): 271; Jones, "President's Column:

Provider/Advocate for the Consumers of Health Care for the Minority Community," Journal of the

National Medical Association 78 (1986): 175; Jones, "President's Column: Effects of Competition on

Access to Care: Will New Trends in Competition Limit Access to Health Care for Blacks," Journal of

the National Medical Association 77 (1985): 968; Brew, Story of Edith Irby Jones, 41; Jones, "Closing the

Health Status Gap," 485; Jones, interview by Brosnan and Hopkins; Jones, "Farewell Address," 808.

34. Whitaker, "Breakthroughs Are Her Business," 96; University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences

Center for Diversity Affairs, http://cda.uams.edu (accessed October 27, 2017); Mark Richard Mosa,

"Doctor Double," Black Enterprise 31 (May 2001): 89; "Changing the Face of Medicine: Dr. Edith

Irby Jones"; "Jones, Edith Irby," in Marquis Who's Who in the World.

35. Jones, "Direct Relationship of Health Status," 271; Whitaker, "Breakthroughs Are Her Busi-

ness," 94, 96; Brew, Story of Edith Irby Jones, 25, 49.

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