Dr. Louis Sullivan, Black vs Negro

In our classmate website we were discussing the tinges of words: black, Negro, African-American, Asian and Oriental.

 

I told an anecdote about the “N” word and the now-well-accepted word, “black”.

 

When I came to the US in 1965, to Jersey City Medical Center as a straight medical intern, the hospital was still affiliated with the New Jersey College of Medicine and Dentistry. My very first ward teaching attending in America was Dr. Louis Sullivan. Do you remember who he was? He was the US Secretary of Health and Human Services between 1989 and 1993. He was an African-American and the founder and first president of the Morehouse School of Medicine for African-American that was founded in Atlant, Georgia around 1978 till 1981.

 

After I started my work for a couple of days, he came to my ward for his first teaching visit with us. When the teaching attending came to the floor for his three-times-a-week session, all the staff of the floor gathered to listen to him. The group included a senior resident, Dr. Bob Seidel (who is one of the most respectable residents and physicians I have encountered in my life; I should write a story about him one day), three medical students (Bill Mrozeck, Steven White,  and another Dr. Gross who is a famous gastroenterologist now) and myself. (There should have been a junior medical resident above me, and another intern working on the same floor with me, but we did not have them because of the shortage of house staff, if I remember correctly.)

 

Before the teaching began, Dr. Sullivan picked up my medical record, the first one that I wrote in the US, and started to read silently. At that time, I had just arrived in the US about 10 days earlier.  Though looking like an inexperienced young man to them, I already had one year of medical residency at NTUH. And I was determined to do my best, with a Kamikaze succeed-or-die spirit.  I thought my medical record was written very carefully and hoped he would appreciate my work.  As to him, he probably was curious to see how this Asian intern’s ability was.

 

By then he should have known that Asians from Taiwan should not be that bad, because he had a hematology fellow, Liu2 Rong2-Gia3, our NTUMC alumnus 5 years ahead of us. Dr. Liu had an excellent performance record during his internship and residency at the Jersey City Medical Center. Liu later followed Sullivan to the Boston City Hospital and, after some years, went to somewhere in the Midwest.

 

As Dr. Sullivan read the first sentence of my admission note, his face tensed. Then he spelt out with obvious anger, “I see here it says, ‘A 33 year old black woman was admitted…..’. What does it mean ‘black’?” He looked at us lividly. Bob Seidel appeared uneasy.  He could have explained, “Clem is just here from Taiwan and …” or something. But he did not say a word, probably trying to let Dr. Sullivan understand my background by himself. There was a silence. After looking at all of us, Dr. Sullivan looked at me and continued: “Don’t you mean to say ‘Negro’?”

 

In Taiwan, we refer to black or African-Americans as “black men” without any malice. Actually I remember I wrote black instead of Negro, because I thought the word Negro might be a racial slur! Now it is, but I did not know it was the other way around then.

 

Under his furious eyes, I was tongue-tied. I just looked at him, paralyzed, my palms sweating. I thought what a way to start my work in the US! I recall that after a short hesitation, I took the chart quietly and corrected the word “black” to “Negro”. He then realized that this Asian did not know what the word Black or Negro implied in the US, and went on with his teaching. He might have felt slightly embarrassed to be so infuriated at me afterwards. He was a good teaching attending to me and to all of us.

 

Dr. Sullivan graduated from the Boston University Medical School, and was probably recruited by Dr. Jehger (of Peutz-Jehger’s syndrome), who came from Boston to be the chief of medicine at the JCMC. (Bob Seidel was recruited by Dr. Jehger “to help train new house staff” at the JCMC as the second year medical resident--after he had finished the second year residency at the Boston City Hospital!)  After one year Dr. Sullivan went back to Boston City Hospital and Harvard as hematologist. He set up a Hematology service at BCH. BCH was run by three services, Harvard, Boston University, and Tufts at that time.

 

After spending one year at Montefiore Hospital Medical Center in Bronx, NY, an excellent Jewish hospital, as a junior medical resident, I was accepted by the BCH, Boston University Service, as the senior assistant medical resident. I was accepted by Dr. Franz J. Ingelfinger who was the chief of medicine there, and later the chief editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. I had asked Bob Seidel to write the letter of recommendation for me.  Dr. Ingelfinger said to me on the phone, “Since Bob knows you well, I will accept you as our senior assistant medical resident.”  I was overjoyed to be finally able to work at the BCH, which has been famous in the history of US medicine and for its long history of working for the Boston’s poor.

 

At the BCH, Dr. Sullivan became my ward attending physician again!  He once picked up a piece of paper, wiped a stain on the floor in front of us and said, “just like a pigpen!”. He was a serious and proud Black, African-American, and Negro. A history maker. He passed away in 2003.

 

Whether a word has any derogatory connotation or not depends on what the speaker had in his/her mind at that time. I am sad to see that words have lost their original meanings because of twisted human minds.

 

Dr. Sullivan came to Taiwan, to Hualien in 1994 or 1995, and met with the Master Nun of Tzu-chi.  I was working at Tzu-chi from 1990 till 1995. Our senior Lee Ming-Liang was the founding president of the Tzu-chi medical college then (later became the Minister of Health in Taiwan).  He arranged a meeting of Dr. Sullivan with the Nun, and probably with some others, without me.  He might have thought that I was far out of the Nun’s favor then, and did not notify me to attend that meeting.  He did not know that I had a long relationship with Dr. Sullivan as early as 1965. Missing that meeting with Dr. Sullivan in Hualien was one of the most regrettable experiences, or non-experiences, in my life!