Beside the Troubled Waters

by Herefored, Sonnie Wellington, III; Ellis, Jack D.

• ISBN13: 9780817317218
• ISBN10: 081731721X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-02-01
• Publisher: Univ of Alabama Pr

Summary

Beside the Troubled Watersis a memoir by an African American physician in Alabama whose story in many ways typifies the lives and careers of black doctors in the south during the segregationist era while also illustrating the diversity of the black experience in the medical profession. Based on interviews conducted with Hereford over ten years, the account includes his childhood and youth as the son of a black sharecropper and Primitive Baptist minister in Madison County, Alabama, during the Depression; his education at Huntsville's all-black Councill School and medical training at Meharry Medical College in Nashville; his medical practice in Huntsville's black community beginning in 1956; his efforts to overcome the racism he met in the white medical community; his participation in the civil rights movement in Huntsville; and his later problems with the Medicaid program and state medical authorities, which eventually led to the loss of his license. Hereford's memoir stands out because of its medical and civil rights themes, and also because of its compelling account of the professional ruin Hereford encountered after 37 years of practice, as the end of segregation and the federal role in medical care placed black doctors in competition with white ones for the first time.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Map	p. 10
Through a Glass Darkly	p. 11
To Be a Doctor	p. 37
Medical Practice under Segregation	p. 55
Bringing Freedom to the Rocket City	p. 86
Integrating the Hospital and the Schools	p. 111
Troubles and Trials	p. 127
Afterword	p. 144
Notes	p. 151
Bibliography	p. 167
Index	p. 173
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