The Past Today: A Southern Physician Visits the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum

June 11, 2018June 14, 2018 reflectivemededLeave a comment

By Suzanne Minor

At this year’s Southern Group on Educational Affairs conference, the University of Mississippi hosted an outing at the Two Mississippi Museums, consisting of the Museum of Mississippi History and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum.

I focused my visit on the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. It was exhausting, difficult, heart-wrenching, and, in the end, hopeful. Growing up in rural Georgia and Jacksonville, Florida, I witnessed legalized segregation through small private schools and experienced rampant racism as the norm. Thankfully, college and medical school broadened my perspective, particularly gross anatomy. Once without skin, all of those black and white cadavers looked so similar. Not better than or less than, but equal in skinless death. I dove into former slave narratives, reading Frederick Douglas and trying to reconcile the message from my upbringing – that I was better than because I was white – with my new learning in gross anatomy and in my direct experience with people who looked different than me. I was learning that we were all just human, no better and no worse than each other. My professional career has been dedicated to attending to the medical and holistic needs of the underserved communities of Miami, Florida, a diverse area in which I’m in the minority.

#WhiteCoats4BlackLives

September 20, 2016September 20, 2016 reflectivemededLeave a comment

The capturing on video of the recent death of Terence Crutcher due to a police shooting has renewed concern about the respect paid to black lives in U.S. society. ReflectiveMedEd reprints these remarks from a #WhiteCoats4BlackLives event at the Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine which was part of a national observance that gathered significant media attention. (See MSNBC link)

Loyola Stritch Medical Students Participate in National Justice Action

The following remarks were delivered by first year student, Kamaal Jones at a “die-in” on December 10, 2014 in the Atrium of the Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. This event was part of a nation-wide day of action at medical schools calling attention to the need to become a more just and inclusive society toward persons of color. The staged “die-in” specifically expressed solidarity with all seeking justice for deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. This action was student-led and coordinated by Chizelle Rush.

Good afternoon, my name is Kamaal Jones and I am a first year medical student here at Stritch. I first would like to briefly acknowledge all those involved in making today happen, specifically Chizelle Rush, who really took the lead in mobilizing and organizing us for this event. Today we, along with over 1000 medical students across the nation, are here to stand in solidarity with the recent protests which have captivated our country. For those who may lack some familiarity, these demonstrations have been born from a long history of issues with racial profiling and police violence in our society, and specifically, the grossly disproportionate levels at which the lives of Black and Brown people are taken by officers in this nation. The tipping point which has served as the catalyst for these most recent events was the August 9th killing of unarmed teenager Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, as well as the July 17th killing of an unarmed man named Eric Garner by an NYPD officer in Staten Island, NY. In both of these incidents, Grand Jury’s decided not to seek any charges against the officers…