Melvin E. Jenkins, Jr., MD - AAP.org

ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Melvin E. Jenkins, Jr., MD Interviewed by Howard A. Pearson, MD August 12, 2008 North Bethesda, Maryland This interview was supported by the American Academy of Pediatrics Friends of Children Fund

©2009 American Academy of Pediatrics Elk Grove Village, IL

Melvin E. Jenkins, Jr., MD Interviewed by Howard A. Pearson, MD

Preface

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About the Interviewer

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Interview of Melvin E. Jenkins, Jr., MD

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Index of Interview

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Curriculum Vitae, Melvin E. Jenkins, Jr., MD

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PREFACE

Oral history has its roots in the sharing of stories which has occurred throughout the centuries. It is a primary source of historical data, gathering information from living individuals via recorded interviews. Outstanding pediatricians and other leaders in child health care are being interviewed as part of the Oral History Project at the Pediatric History Center of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Under the direction of the Historical Archives Advisory Committee, its purpose is to record and preserve the recollections of those who have made important contributions to the advancement of the health care of children through the collection of spoken memories and personal narrations. This volume is the written record of one oral history interview. The reader is reminded that this is a verbatim transcript of spoken rather than written prose. It is intended to supplement other available sources of information about the individuals, organizations, institutions, and events that are discussed. The use of face-to-face interviews provides a unique opportunity to capture a firsthand, eyewitness account of events in an interactive session. Its importance lies less in the recitation of facts, names, and dates than in the interpretation of these by the speaker.

Historical Archives Advisory Committee, 2008/2009 Howard A. Pearson, MD, FAAP, Chair David Annunziato, MD, FAAP Jeffrey P. Baker, MD, FAAP Lawrence M. Gartner, MD, FAAP Doris A. Howell, MD, FAAP Stanford T. Shulman, MD, FAAP James E. Strain, MD, FAAP

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ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Howard A. Pearson, MD

Dr. Howard A. Pearson is Professor of Pediatrics Emeritus at the Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut. He was graduated from Dartmouth College and the two year Dartmouth Medical School. He transferred to Harvard Medical School and received the MD degree in 1954. He served a rotating internship and a two year pediatric residency at the US Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, under Dr. Thomas E. Cone. He then had a fellowship in Pediatric Hematology under Dr. Louis K. Diamond at the Boston Children’s Hospital. Between 1958 and 1962, he was Assistant Chief of Pediatrics and Head of Pediatric Hematology at the US Naval Hospital, Bethesda, Maryland, and was Assistant Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the Howard University School of Medicine, Washington, DC. He then went to the University Of Florida College of Medicine in Gainesville and established the first Section of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology. In 1968, he came to Yale University School of Medicine as Professor of Pediatrics and Head of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology. Between 1972 and 1985, he was Chairman of Pediatrics and Chief of the pediatric service at the Yale New Haven Hospital. In 1991, he was elected Vice President of the American Academy of Pediatrics and served as AAP President in 1992. In 1993, he was appointed to the AAP Historical Archives Advisory Committee and served as its chairman until 2008.

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Interview of Melvin E. Jenkins, Jr., MD DR. PEARSON: The date is August 12, 2008. I’m at the lovely apartment of Dr. Melvin and Maria Jenkins in suburban Bethesda, MD to take his oral history. Mel, will you say a few words so we can check the system? DR. JENKINS: This is Mel Jenkins, and I’m sitting here with Howard [A.] Pearson, whom I’ve known for many years, for a conversation about my academic background. DR. PEARSON: And your other backgrounds, as well. Let’s start from the very beginning. I know from your CV [curriculum vitae] that you were born in Kansas City, Missouri and raised there. I’ve been to Kansas City and know that the Missouri River divides two Kansas Cities right in the middle. Tell me about growing up — your family background, your parents and siblings. DR. JENKINS: Although I was born in Kansas City, Missouri, I only lived there for six months, and then moved to Kansas City, Kansas, where I remained for all of my developmental years until medical school when I left home for Howard University. This was the first time that I had been east of the Mississippi River ever, and the first time I had been on the East Coast. Growing up in Kansas was interesting, particularly in terms of the racial divide and diversity. Kansas came into the Union as an almost totally free state in 1858. Now, here is a little background to that. You may recall that Abraham Lincoln, although he did not free the slaves initially, was totally against any expansion of slavery into new states or new territories. Kansas was in the process of joining the Union at that time. There were some Kansans who were rabid abolitionists, and you may or may not know that one of those groups was the Jayhawks [Jayhawkers]. A lot of people don’t know who the Jayhawks were. DR. PEARSON:

Bloody Kansas.

DR. JENKINS: It was Bloody Kansas because William [Clarke] Quantrill had gathered some renegade confederate soldiers to fight the Jayhawks. In fact, Quantrill burned Lawrence, Kansas to the ground, the site of the current The University of Kansas. These conflicts, although very vicious, ended when Kansas came in as a slave-free state in 1858. But Kansas has further interest. It not only had the Jayhawks, but also other rabid abolitionists including John Brown. Many people don’t realize that John Brown was an important figure in Kansas. Across one wall in the state capitol is a picture of John Brown with a rifle in one hand and a bible in the other hand. John Brown is very much respected in Kansas. We don’t look upon him as some sort of half-crazed individual as some people think about him.

I’d like to talk about my whole family, which I think was remarkable because of what they achieved, even though some were not educated people. I had an unusual family background. My grandfather was born in Opelika, Alabama in 1870, five years after the end of the Civil War. He had essentially no education, only four years of four-month schooling in inferior schools, so he really had no educational background. But at age 20, he left Opelika because he was afraid that the people there were hostile toward him, because he had some dreams that weren’t quite traditional for an AfricanAmerican of that day. He left when he was 20 and “hoboed” — which was the usual means of traveling — from North Louisiana going to Chicago where the job opportunities were. But for some reason he stopped off in Kansas City, and when he stopped off there was a job opportunity with the Swift Packing Company [Swift & Company]. He got a job shoveling coal out of gondolas into the chutes that went into the area where they made lard. In 1890, he made 50 cents a day for an eight hour day. Being a big, strong man — six foot two tall with a very dark complexion and big muscles — he took two jobs and worked 16 hours a day making a dollar a day. Fairly early he bought a house in Kansas City, Kansas. It was a small house with three or four rooms with an outhouse for a toilet. He began to build on that foundation and decided to build a stone-based grocery store, which he did with own hands, along with the help of one of his sons. He operated this corner grocery store for a long time, but he didn’t make much money. He then rented the store out. I guess this entrepreneurship was part of his nature. He then bought a horse and a wagon and had a coal delivery business in the winter, and an ice delivery business — they had ice boxes then — in the summer. He later bought a 1,000 gallon kerosene tank, and sold kerosene in small amounts for the kerosene stoves that everyone had. We had one when I was young. He did these sorts of investments, and his vision was interesting. In the early 1890s, he bought a piece of property on a dirt road at the bottom of the hill where we lived. That road later became the Southwest Boulevard, which today is a big thoroughfare from Kansas City, Missouri through Kansas City, Kansas. It became very important because as Southwest Boulevard developed, his property was sitting in between developing businesses. He sold the property for $5,000 in 1910. Now $5,000 in 1910, would probably be $350,000 to $400,000 in today’s money. He then bought property on a hill that contained a lot of perch stone rock, some of which was low grade and unstable for foundations, there being no cinder block then. But the high grade stone was used to build houses in some expensive areas of southeast Kansas City, Missouri near the Swope Parkway. On that hill, he blasted out the stone with the help of his son and a few people whom he hired. He was the big perch stone man. But at any rate, I’m just trying to show how my grandfather, with no education, and who could hardly speak good English, did very well in his business. But he could count money, and he became somewhat rich. He probably was the richest black in that whole area of Kansas where we lived. Because of this, he was able to

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encourage his oldest son to go to medical school at Howard University in Washington, DC. After he graduated, that son came back to Sedalia, Missouri and became one of the popular and successful physicians there as a general practitioner. My uncle, Albert R. Maddox, MD, acquired a lot of real estate like his father and became somewhat wealthy. His second child, my mother Marguerite, married right after high school and became a mother who carefully reared her three children. His next son, Clifford, worked with him delivering stone and working in the quarry. So he made money, but not excessively, but he did all right. My grandfather’s youngest child, Edith, was sent to Emporia State [University] school in Kansas, and she became a concert pianist and a teacher. So these were the four children of my grandfather, Charles Maddox. My grandmother, Mary Magdalene Greenwood was also from Opelika, Alabama, and she joined my grandfather in Kansas City. She was a very religious woman. I remember that when I was in the third grade, I learned that she was a Christian Scientist, and I began to talk with her about Christian Science, even at that early age. She did not want to see physicians, except as a last resort. She was really into her religion. I didn’t quite understand what she talked about. Actually, we did not share a lot of thoughts. In fact, I didn’t exchange that many thoughts with my grandfather either, but I watched him closely, and I could see certain aspects of his work habits which must have registered in my subconscious as being something that was unusual. I didn’t see anybody else around the neighborhood doing the type of things that he did. It was only later that I realized how significant he had been in his foresight of business and the impact it had on me. My father was somewhat similar to my grandfather. He came from Ruston, Louisiana, which sits east of Shreveport and west of Grambling and Monroe. I think he was a good student who obtained his high school diploma in Ruston, and probably he had a mathematical mind. He came to Kansas City when he was around 19 and took one of the few jobs that blacks could acquire — a janitor in the Burd & Fletcher [Co.] paper company. He quickly was promoted to a supervisory role when the company gave him into some other aspects of the job, including the initial phase of reprocessing and reusing of paper. As a child, I remember trucks from the paper company delivering to our house used rope, which my mother would roll into big packages tied with a special knot. Later, a truck from the company would retrieve the rolled rope. That brought extra money into the family. My father also went into the chicken breeding business while he was a janitor, and he raised White Leghorn chickens, which were good egg layers. I remember the brooder in the back yard. I also distinctly remember some of the other things he did. I don’t know if he had seen these done someplace else, or whether he intellectually did it himself. He rigged up an alarm clock to go off at 2:00 am with a spool on it that turned on the lights in the

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henhouse, thus making the hens lay more eggs, which we sold for 25 cents a dozen. My grandfather’s store sold my dad’s eggs. I also recall another important process that he set up. He put a light bulb in a can with a hole on the top. At night he could look into an egg to be sure it wasn’t fertilized. He wasn’t going to sell any fertilized eggs which were for breeding. I remember that distinctly. My dad was very adventuresome, and in the 1930s, he decided that he needed something more than this menial kind of work. He took a correspondence course in civil service from The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. He wanted to become a postman, and at that time these were competitive jobs. Mail carriers and postal persons were solid jobs. Jobs were given on the basis of a competitive exam. It was during the depression in the 1930s, and even some college graduates were taking post office jobs, so he was competing against everybody. It really impressed me when he received his score back that was in the 90s. He was hired, and very quickly, and he became a railroad mail courier, riding the route with the mail. Ultimately, he became a supervisor and got himself into the main post office. At the same time, he began to sell insurance through an all-black insurance company called Crusaders in Kansas City, Kansas, and he also did that very well. Another feature of my father’s intellect was that he was a master bridge player. He taught me the Culberston System when I was 12, and so I became a pretty good bridge player. He could play contract bridges with the best of them using that old system. He got into some of the newer systems, too, later on. So my Dad, again, with very little education, was a visionary and a hardworking fellow. I think he was naturally brilliant, although he had very little formal education. These were my two major role models, so to speak. DR. PEARSON:

Your grandfather and your father.

DR. JENKINS: Yes, my grandfather and my father, even though I didn’t realize it then. I didn’t think of my grandfather, really, as a role model in the way that it is currently being used, but I knew all that I was seeing, though I didn’t know that it had registered. Starting with our house, he bought a whole block of property — about seven, eight or nine houses. So he was a natural entrepreneur. DR. PEARSON:

How about the doctor uncle?

DR. JENKINS: The doctor uncle was a hard working fellow. After medical school, he went back to Sedalia, Missouri, and developed a big practice. Sedalia was almost an all-European ancestry town. He built up his practice, and as a general practitioner, delivered lots of babies. He became fairly wealthy because he, too, invested in property. During World War II, he built a lot of housing for the Navy. I think he had about 50 of them, and the Navy leased them from him. Naturally, he made a lot of money on that. I

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don’t think he worried too much, as I recall, about academics. He interacted with me some, and he was very supportive of my ambition to be a physician. In fact, I wrote a poem in the third grade about wanting to be a doctor. DR. PEARSON:

Really?

DR. JENKINS: I did and my youngest daughter still has a copy of it. The original will go into the collection of my papers at The University of Kansas. I remember that my daughter was impressed with this poem. There was one verse where I said I didn’t worry about driving around in a big car like my uncle had. I really felt that I wanted to take care of people, and I didn’t worry about money. I have always been that way. I never worried about money at all. But you know, even though I made enough, I could have made more than I did. That’s the reason I don’t have much reserve money today. When I grew up outside of Kansas City, Kansas, public school was rigidly segregated. I attended all-black elementary, middle and high schools, which I believe provided me an advantage. Incidentally, as unusual as that statement might sound, it not only happened in Kansas, but in places in the East, like here in Washington, DC at Dunbar High School, which was attended by W. [William] Montague Cobb, and Charles [Richard] Drew and several other notable black scholars. Although we were unable to interact with children of European ancestry during school hours, we often engaged in play such as marbles, biking and ball games until their parents intervened and broke us up. There were a number of Mexican immigrants living in Armourdale, one of the three townships adjacent to Kansas City, Kansas. The other two townships were Argentine, and Rosedale where I grew up. Many of the Mexicans were probably illegal, as we say now, but it wasn’t a term we used then. Black kids rarely interacted with the Mexican immigrants, unless the situation was hostile, which was quite different from the pleasant interactions we had with the few American Indians who resided there. Some differences perceived between Mexican immigrants and the American Indians remain in my mind. I remember a measure of hostility which I felt then and this relates to the fact that the Mexicans were allowed to attend the white public schools, whereas blacks were not permitted. Aside from the negative feelings which resulted from the consequences of segregation in the neighborhood, I believe that segregation had an overall positive impact on the careers of many black children in the area. I became a physician. There was an entomologist, who went to the Sudan to develop pest control methods, and a pharmacist who established pharmacies in Denver. He died sort of early in his 50s, but he established that type of tradition in Denver, Colorado. And there were teachers, two of whom became deans of colleges. However, there were also a few boys who became criminals and went to prison. So, we had all those neighbors mixed together.

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The only advantage about the days of segregation was that blacks were forced to live in the same neighborhood. A lawyer might live next to somebody who worked in a meat packing house. In our neighborhood there were no physicians, but there was a black man who was head baker at one of the biggest bakeries in town, and who was known as a master pie maker. So, we had all kinds of people, even one or two prominent politicians, all living together. Oh, I should tell you that some of these people really worked with us. There was an elderly gentleman of color by the name of William Fluellen, who stopped me one day when I was 12 years old and said, “Jenkins, you do well in school. How would you like to start debating?” This was just a fellow in the neighborhood, now. He said, “I’m trying to get some kids together to debate. I’m interested in that, and I’m doing the same thing over in Missouri, getting one or two neighborhoods together, and I want to start some debating teams in Kansas City, Kansas.” And he did. He trained us, about four or five kids, and we had our first debates in Rosedale. Incidentally, all of these debates were in churches. I remember the propositions, not the exact words, but it was that blacks in the north had progressed or were moving faster than blacks in the South. I was chosen for the South side of debate, and we won the first debate. I became known as a good debater in high school, and I went on to win an award at a national contest which was held at The University of Kansas. And all of this started with a lay person in my neighborhood. Well, of course when integration happened, most of those people were scattered to the suburbs. Today, somebody living in the inner cities is not likely to see a great doctor, or a prominent professional living in the same neighborhood, except for programs like the one that Maria, my wife, started at one of the District of Columbia area high schools. This was a racially mixed high school, but there were some black male kids with academic deficiencies who were selected to come to a breakfast club at 7:30 in the morning to interact with successful, black businessmen, physicians and other professionals. The academically superior black kids were not included. Her purpose was to bring these men in so the children could see success stories of men who were not necessarily sports superstars. I think that was a great idea on her part, and I think it helped the children’s point of view. DR. PEARSON: And you went to the Sumner High School in Kansas City? Was it named for Charles Sumner the anti-slavery orator from Massachusetts? DR. JENKINS: Yes. I think Sumner High School was one of the greatest high schools in Kansas, and it was part of the Kansas school system from the 1800s [Sumner High School opened in 1905]. The Kansas State Constitution [Constitution of the State of Kansas] said there could be no racial segregation whatsoever in the state. There could be no segregation,

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and there could be no separate black schools. That was written clearly there in the Kansas State Constitution. Nevertheless, in 1910, there was a fight between a white boy and a black boy on the Sumner High School grounds, and neither of them was a Sumner High School student. The black boy killed the white boy, I think with a baseball bat, after which many whites insisted that the schools had to be segregated. Well, it was against the law, but they finally pushed through an amendment to the Constitution that only in Kansas City, Kansas could there be a segregated high school. That came about later when they segregated Sumner High School, and it became a separate school, but it became a superior school. I don’t know if I should have said, “but it became a superior school.” Instead I should have said, “and it became a superior school” — an academically superior school. For reasons that I’m not totally sure of, by the time I went to Sumner, there was no question that if we were later to enroll in The University of Kansas, the expectations in the university were that we would be superior students. I’ll talk about this later. The black high school students who enrolled in the university were excellent students, perhaps not to the extent that Asian high school students are at this point in time. The university’s expectations were high for black students because of Edward [Vernon] Williams, who came to The University of Kansas from Ellsworth, Kansas, a town of about 300 in population, where they had about eight students in the high school graduating class. He came to the university, and he made A’s in everything. He became a junior Phi Beta Kappa. In those days, and it was the same when I was at the University, at the end of each semester they would post grades by name. My point is that he was so good in college that the European kids nicknamed him “Socrates.” He was the first black student to graduate from the University of Kansas School of Medicine, the ranking student in his class in medical school, president of his class and Alpha Omega Alpha [Honor Medical Society]. That was a good start for black students. You know, when it starts out like that, expectations become higher. We gave him credit for that. He has been honored at The University of Kansas a few times, and not only as the first black student. He didn’t pursue academic research, but he went into private practice in Illinois. I think he must have been a very good practitioner. But you can see how that kind of performance got into the fabric of what the university’s expectations were for later black students. Getting back to expectations, in my classes, particularly in chemistry and physics, I was expected to be at the top, and I tended to be first in most of my classes. Not in physics, but in organic and quantitative, qualitative chemistry my name was usually at the top. I recall when I was taking quantitative analysis, for a little while I got a little political, just a little political. The European students were getting me into political issues because they were getting into anti-segregation. There wasn’t that much segregation in Kansas, but the public facilities, and even in the universities, social activities were pretty much segregated. They had a European annual affair with a banquet,

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and so on, and there was a separate one for the few black students who were there. Some of the students of European ancestry were beginning to rebel against that. We had a lot of meetings. I remember one occasion when they got me to go to a meeting at a town that was about 50 miles from Lawrence. I don’t think I got any sleep that night, and I didn’t study. We had an examination in quantitative analysis the next day. I was someone who studied all along, but I still did a little cramming before exams. I don’t think I have the best memory in the world, although I could integrate facts, and naturally that last minute cramming helped me on tests. Later the professor called me and said, “Jenkins, that’s not you. What’s going on?” Well, I lied and said I was sick. He said “Well you know what you can do, and I know what you can do, so if the next exam is your usual good exam, I’m going to throw this one out.” And he did. He didn’t even count it. So that sort of thing happened to me at least. When I tell this story, some people say that this was most unusual, but it is an example of what I said about expectations. DR. PEARSON:

And recognizing quality.

DR. JENKINS: Yes. Except for physics, I was usually at the top. Other students were making 50s or 60s, and I was making 90s. DR. PEARSON: Looking at your curriculum vitae, you went through The University of Kansas and then the medical school in only six years? DR. JENKINS: Well, six years was the total. In those World Was II days, education was accelerated, so I only spent two years in college before going to medical school. I finished medical school in March of 1946, and I hadn’t started college until September of 1940, so it was less than six years. DR. PEARSON:

But you got an AB degree [Artium Baccalaureatus]?

DR. JENKINS: a BS at that time.

Yes, an AB, not a BS [Bachelor of Science]. I didn’t get

DR. PEARSON:

And then an MD in less than six years after high school.

DR. JENKINS: In less than six years. I wasn’t the only one doing that. A lot of the students did the same thing I did. When I think back on it, I realize that it was a different time. Today is different. There is so much going on now, but at that time I think it made sense. We didn’t really need everything taught in the preclinical courses, as long as we could demonstrate an ability to analyze and to think in the clinical years. I don’t think everybody needs all of the anatomy usually taught in medical school, and I didn’t make good grades in anatomy. I wouldn’t have made a good surgeon. One of the reasons I didn’t make the kind of honors I could have made was because I knew what specialty I would be going into after graduation. We

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also knew that we would be going into action after our training, and that we all would have to serve in the military. DR. PEARSON: After you graduated from medical school, you decided to go where your uncle had gone. You went east to Howard University and Freedmen’s Hospital [became Howard University Hospital in 1975] for your internship. DR. JENKINS: I went east after medical school. But it wasn’t because of my uncle. It was the only place I could get an internship. My own school in Kansas would not let me do an internship. The reason, they said, was because white patients would object, although they had never objected to me as a student. But the excuse they gave me was that it would disrupt a lot of the relationships. So I had to go elsewhere. DR. PEARSON:

So there were not a lot of alternatives?

DR. JENKINS: There were not a lot of alternatives. For blacks, the Lincoln [Medical and Mental Health Center] Hospital or Harlem Hospital [Center] in New York, and the predominantly black Provident Hospital [of Cook County] in Chicago were the only places in which I could intern. I possibly could have gone to Mount Sinai [Medical Center] in New York, and if I had been really extraordinary, to Harvard [Medical School], but very, very few blacks went to internship there. So I came to Howard, and it was a good thing for me, because when I came to Howard, I was thrust into more scientific activities. I arrived on the weekend to start on Monday, July 1, l946, and the first professor to sit with me at lunch was Charles Drew. Many times after that, he used to pick me out to discuss medical science material. He had a remarkable mind. I was even invited to his research laboratory. I also met giants like J.B. [John Beauregard] Johnson, who was in internal medicine. He had a laboratory and was doing sophisticated enzyme studies in 1946. At that time, they didn’t have the instrumentation that we have now. I did some research with Roland [B.] Scott fairly early, but he wasn’t into real basic research, which was the kind of research I wanted to do. So with Angela [D.] Ferguson, I started working with measurement of blood volume. In those days, measuring blood volume wasn’t easy. I had a good technician, a fellow who had been in the military, who assisted me with dye dilution techniques. We used T-1824 [Evans] blue dye, and with dilution methodologies, we could directly measure the plasma volume. Then using a complicated equation with the hematocrit, we were able to calculate the blood volume indirectly. It was interesting, because I did a lot of these studies on humans, including patients with sickle cell anemia. I wrote a paper entitled, “Studies in Sickle Cell Anemia: VII Blood Volumes Relationships and the Use of a Plasma Expander in Sickle Cell Disease in Childhood: A Preliminary Report.” [Pediatrics Volume 18 No 2 August 1956 pp 239-248] Now, I was one of the early ones to study plasma expanders. I

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had conceived the idea of taking the glucose out of the experimental IV [intravenous] fluids and replacing it with fructose. I figured that fructose needed to take time to convert to glucose, so it wouldn’t overflow into the urine as quickly, so I thereby maintained blood volume. These were some important studies in which Angela Ferguson was involved. Angela was a talented person who was very involved in research and confined herself to that activity. Roland Scott was very wise to put her in that lab because we had so few trainees going into research. DR. PEARSON:

You were doing research while you were still a resident?

DR. JENKINS:

Yes.

DR. PEARSON:

But you took a rotating internship first?

DR. JENKINS: Yes, and started some research when I could sneak into the lab of Robert [P.] Crawford, who was a senior resident. Now Robert Crawford was the ranking member of his class in 1945. He was a very quiet fellow, but a student who could retain knowledge. I could think, but I could never retain knowledge at a high level. I didn’t clutter up what little space I had with all those facts. That made me not make the highest grades in several courses. I made high grades, but I never made straight As. I didn’t take notes, but tried to synthesize material. DR. PEARSON: I noticed in your bibliography that during your first years at Howard, you did research in some of the areas that Roland Scott was studying — sickle cell disease, growth and development. DR. JENKINS: Yes, because it was my idea to really look at prevalent conclusions that black newborns were significantly smaller than white newborns. And this was a time consuming job which lasted about five years. That paper reviewed data from 11,000 newborns. I went through all the documents, reviewed medical records on each individual subject. There was no microfilm for space saving films. We did show that the black babies were smaller than European babies of the same gestational age. That paper resulted in a large number of requests for reprints. After this, Roland Scott got interested in growth and development, and he became known as an expert in growth and development in black infants and children. DR. PEARSON: in newborns.

I remember your paper on the frequency of sickle cell trait

DR. JENKINS: Yes. It was the first study of that problem. Actually, it was Robert Crawford’s idea that I kind of piggybacked on. Roland Scott also wanted to know the relative effectiveness of several sickle cell diagnostic methodologies.

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DR. PEARSON: In that study, you used the Sickledex test, which is relatively insensitive. Your paper described a paucity of sickle cell trait in black newborns compared to older children. After your internship and pediatric residency, you were on the Howard faculty as an instructor and an assistant professor, and stayed at Howard? DR. JENKINS: I stayed at Howard mainly out of necessity. You have to remember that those were days of pretty rigid segregation. You may or may not remember, but I was very interested in fluid and electrolytes, acids and bases. I became interested with Dr. Fred [Frederic Crosby] Bartter in fluid problems. DR. PEARSON:

He was at the NIH [National Institutes of Health]?

DR. JENKINS: At the NIH he was head of the clinical center [National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute Chief of the Hypertension-Endocrine Branch], and the first patient with Bartter’s syndrome was actually my patient. He had persistent hypokalemia, and I asked Fred what might be going on. Now, I must admit that it wasn’t my thinking. It was Fred’s thinking that finally explained the reason for the patient’s problem. He had the lab equipment and the background to do this, which I didn’t. Some people think he should have put my name on that first paper as he did on some later papers such as “Studies in pseudohypoparathyroidism. Two new cases with a probable selective deficiency of thyrotropin” [Am J Med. 1969 Mar;46(3):464-71] that I did work on. But most of the ideas were his, and I went along. DR. PEARSON:

When did you decide to be an endocrinologist?

DR. JENKINS: That’s a good question, because initially I was more interested in fluids and electrolytes. I worked with a fellow at the NIH named Hans [G.] Keitel. DR. PEARSON: The one who described the hyposthenuria of sickle cell disease and how it could be reversed with blood transfusions? DR. JENKINS: That’s right. At any rate, I became very interested, and I wrote a little booklet on fluid and electrolytes for students, which they used at that time. I also met Hans Selye who was very much into fluid and electrolytes too. When he started talking about the General Adaptation Syndrome [GAS], I actually I went up to Montreal to see him a couple of times, and we interacted. He was an extremely brilliant man, extremely. Did you ever talk to him? DR. PEARSON:

No, but of course I know about the GAS.

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DR. JENKINS: General Adaptation Syndrome, yes. And then I became very interested in the adrenal gland and did research now and then with Claude [J.] Migeon at [Johns] Hopkins [Hospital]. He was the adrenal man at Hopkins. My decision for endocrinology was because of Hans Selye. Not that I was going to do anything with the General Adaptation Syndrome, but I just became interested in the adrenals, which had so much substance. A lot of that started with my fluid and electrolyte interest, because of the influence of the adrenal endocrine gland. So, I slipped into endocrinology. DR. PEARSON: You did two years of fellowship at [The] Johns Hopkins [School of Medicine]? Was one of these a year on sabbatical leave from Howard? DR. JENKINS: I was in fellowship two years. One I had to fund with my own money. I was ready for sabbatical from Howard, and so I got that one. Then I got some money from several sources. I knew I had to do at least two years. I should have done three. I know something about Yale [School of Medicine], and I know how well James [P.] Comer has done up there. He is a remarkable, brilliant man. Hopkins was God’s place. And even today, it’s said that they are number one. Did you read that in U.S. News [and World Report] the other day? Hopkins is still the number one medical school. Hopkins was an unusual place. At Hopkins, there were two big things that impressed me most. Number one, almost everybody training there was a bright, superstar, and they came from everywhere. Ave Karwaski from Israel. Samuel Raitu from Australia. Everybody I met had an area in which they were super bright. Once in a while you would get somebody who was just bright, but not super bright, but not too often. Jo Anne Brasel was super bright like all of them. Number two reason that I think was important was that any time I got a thought that might seem original, I had someone I could call on the phone for advice, like Victor [A.] McKusick, who just died. Early on I had some things that I talked with him about. I remember David [L.] Rimoin, who was a geneticist and extremely brilliant. He followed Jo Anne Brasel to Harbor[-UCLA Medical Center] hospital. And then Allan Drash, with whom I was close. He and I also had similar tragedies in that his wife died of breast cancer, and my first wife died a little later of the same disease. I’ve been around Howard a long time, and I’m proud of that. There were also very helpful people at Howard. DR. PEARSON: I want you to talk about a couple of other things that we kind of skipped over. Tell me about when you came east for your internship. Was it at Freedmen’s Hospital? DR. JENKINS:

Yes.

DR. PEARSON: I know that Freedmen’s Hospital was set up after the Civil War and was under the [US] Department of Interior. The Howard Medical

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School was founded about the same time as the Freedmen’s Hospital? DR. JENKINS: Along with the Freedmen’s Bureau in about 1866, somewhere along in there. The first class of Howard Medical School had eight students. I’m almost certain it was eight, although it could have been six. I think that there were four men and four women. They were all of European ancestry, except for one woman whose name was Minnie Brown, who was part Indian. Her name was really Minnehaha Brown, but she’d taken the “haha” off. I don’t want to go into a lot of data about the black history of the migrations, but Colorado was mostly settled by blacks. Actually, the first hotels were built by blacks who became wealthy. Minnie settled out there. Though she wasn’t black, but she went out there and became wealthy. She gave all of her money to start The Children’s Hospital of Denver. In fact, the director of the hospital, Dr. [L.] Joseph Butterfield, later came out to Howard to look at the archives, and he found some information about Minnie Brown and actually thought that she was black, but she wasn’t. He gathered all of that information, and I think put it in Denver’s Children’s Hospital archives — about the Howard connection with Denver Children’s Hospital. DR. PEARSON: They’ve moved the hospital out of town to a vacated [United States] Air Force base. DR. JENKINS: That’s right. At any rate, that’s the Howard story and Minnie Brown. There are some museums in this country that many people don’t know about. There’s a black curator in Denver by the name of Paul [W.] Stewart, who set up a museum called the Black [American West] Museum. He collected a lot of information and items in the museum about the black cowboys who were out there. Sixty-two percent of those cowboys, even some of the famous like Wilson Pickett were all black, but they were often anglicized in the movies. Some of them were legitimate in the movies, like Buffalo Bill Cody, who was white. People have anglicized so much data in this country that it’s no surprise that the cowboys were generally anglicized. DR. PEARSON: I have a pen pal named Seymour [E.] Wheelock, who is a historian, and we exchange notes. He lives in Denver. DR. JENKINS: Oh, he would know Stewart then. Minnie Brown was there in those early days when Howard Medical School was in its infancy. Up to about 15 years ago it was highly respected, more so than it is now. It’s a much more competitive world now, and Howard loses many brilliant black students to the predominantly white schools. DR. PEARSON:

Well, of course after the Flexner Report in 1910, Howard

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and Meharry Medical College had the only two black medical schools that survived. DR. JENKINS: Oh yes, there were all kinds of black medical schools all over the country, though many of them were only diploma mills. Another thing about Howard was that over the years it attracted many black superstars such as Charles Drew, before he was killed. Also, there was Hildrus [A.] Poindexter, who came to Howard from Harvard and was the one who began the smallpox eradication program, along with a physician by the name of Margaret . DR. PEARSON: There was another early pediatrician in Washington that you may have known, a man named Dr. Alonzo deGrate Smith. DR. JENKINS: Alonzo deGrate, and he thought he was “the great.” Alonzo deGrate Smith was a general pediatrician for a long time, but I don’t know his history that well. DR. PEARSON: It’s interesting because he was certified “on record” by the American Board of Pediatrics in 1934. He got ABP certificate #20 on the basis that he had been practicing pediatrics for 10 years. And the next black to be certified was Roland Scott, who had to take an exam. DR. JENKINS: I had heard some of that history, but I didn’t know it as well as what you just said. DR. PEARSON: It’s an interesting story that you may like to hear. When the Board was set up in 1933, under the Advisory Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS), it was required that you had to be a member of the American Medical Association (AMA) to be certified. Roland Scott and Alonzo deGrate Smith could not be AMA members at that time because they could not join the segregated DC local chapter. So Borden Veeder — DR. JENKINS:

Borden Veeder with the Journal of Pediatrics?

DR. PEARSON: Yes, later, but he was the first president of the American Board of Pediatrics. He went to the ABMS meeting and presented Drs. de Grate Smith and Roland Scott to them. The Committee asked, “Why are you presenting these men to us. They’re obviously qualified.” Veeder then said, “Well they can’t be members of the AMA, because they could not join the local chapter.” And the next year, AMA membership as a requirement for board certification was dumped. It was Borden Veeder, largely, who did it. DR. JENKINS: Borden Veeder, well that’s good. I knew the ABMS had problems with the AMA membership for blacks.

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DR. PEARSON: At Howard, pediatrics was originally a part of internal medicine, but when Roland Scott came as chair, did he have a separate department? DR. JENKINS: Not originally. Actually, he only was chief of the pediatric division when I came to Washington. I think that it was not until 1949, that pediatrics became an independent department. DR. PEARSON: In one of the things you wrote about Dr. Scott, you said that in addition to all of his academic duties he had a busy practice. DR. JENKINS: He did, and this was unusual. He was a guy who didn’t require a lot of sleep. The only other person I know like that was Dr. Carl [V.] Moore, the Cleveland hematologist, who also had a very busy practice just like Scott. I know this because Scott used to tell me about him. I don’t know how they did it. Actually, when I was doing some of my more sophisticated research, I had to go over it with Dr. Scott, and he mostly understood everything I was talking about. We only could do this on a night when he did not have his practice — Wednesday night. But even then, he was so busy I had to go to his office at about 10:00 at night. We then interacted, and it was not until about 2:00 in the morning that I could get out of there. I discovered the only way I could leave, which is kind of funny, was that Dr. Scott liked beer. When it was getting too late, I would ask him for a beer and give him one, too. If I could get two or three beers in him, then I could get away. That was true. Otherwise, I just couldn’t get him to stop. There was another thing about Roland Scott. He did yoga, which was all beyond me. A lot of people seem to need that sort of thing to clear out, but I never needed it. Well, maybe I did need it, but I didn’t do it. Sometimes going to a meeting with him, we shared a room to save money, which we didn’t have a lot of. I would wake up early in the morning, and there he would quietly be doing yoga, much to my amazement. DR. PEARSON: Roland Scott was born in Denison, Texas, and he spent time in Kansas City, Kansas? DR. JENKINS: No, in Kansas City, Missouri. His mother came to Kansas City, Missouri when his father died, and he attended Lincoln [College Prep] High School in Kansas City, Missouri. He was very good student, at the top of his class there, and people talked very positively about Scott. He was a very smart guy, obviously. DR. PEARSON: Chicago?

Before he went to Howard, he had an internship in

DR. JENKINS: That’s right. He was up there with [Joseph] Brenneman and [Frederic W.] Schlutz. Schultz was from Europe

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somewhere, Scandinavia I believe. Some of the men he interacted with in Chicago were brilliant people. DR. PEARSON:

He then went to Howard on the faculty?

DR. JENKINS: Yes. I think the visionary thing that I talked about was his real strength, and he could see the total picture. When he began to think about sickle cell disease, he could visualize that this was a very important disease. I don’t know that he knew that it was a prototype for other genetic defects, which it turned out to be, rather than only a kind of disease. It turned out to be the initial disease that set the tone for amino acid substitutions. But Scott loved sickle cell disease. DR. PEARSON: I was on the clinical faculty at Howard in the 1960s. When I visited Howard, I was concerned that there were only two departments in the whole hospital that tested for sickle cell — pediatrics and urology. Urology, probably, because of the hematuria that occurs in people with sickle cell trait. But the internists weren’t doing testing. I think they felt it was a childhood problem, didn’t they? DR. JENKINS: Yes, and they weren’t ready to fight for the adolescent age group. Later, when pediatrics took over adolescent medicine, they let it slide. I’m not sure they’re happy about that now. DR. PEARSON:

In 1955, you entered the Air Force?

DR. JENKINS: I was drafted even though the Korean War was over. I went to Korea a few times, because even though they weren’t fighting then, we had occupation troops there. I was stationed in Japan from 1955 – 1957, as a consultant in pediatrics, going to small outposts and neighborhoods to consult. DR. PEARSON: You published two papers from Japan about hemoglobinopathies and pinworms. DR. JENKINS: Pinworms. That was good. A master sergeant there helped me, and he was good. He really was interested in getting his name on a paper, so he got his name on the pinworm paper. I don’t know how important a study it was, but it did consider the worm’s life cycle. We decided, and part of this was the sergeant’s idea, that if we put an ointment — we chose zinc oxide — locally over the child’s anus, we would disrupt the pinworm cycle of laying eggs. We had positive results, and it was published in the Journal of Pediatrics. It may not sound important because it isn’t practical today. You can get rid of pinworms so much easier now. But, thinking about the pinworm cycle was very important. Let me just say something else about my time in Japan. People began to really respect me

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for making diagnoses. When I was there, another pediatrician by the name of Goodwin was finishing his tour of duty and was about to go back to Chicago. I had just arrived when we had a patient with diarrhea, probably viral diarrhea. Four or five days later, he developed severe pain and began to scream. I was kind of an egotistical guy in some ways. I was proud of myself, maybe too much so. But, I was following the patient, and actually I thought I felt an abdominal mass. I went down to the radiologist and went over everything, and told him to do a barium enema. Lo and behold, we had an intussusception. We knew nothing about a relationship between viral enteritis and intussusceptions, and I don’t think anything had been written about it then in 1955. Even afterwards, I didn’t learn about a relationship between viral enteritis and intussusceptions. I went to the surgeon and told him we had an intussusception, and once they saw the x-ray there was no doubt about it. So they operated. Goodwin went on to say that I didn’t know what I was talking about, but really, he appeared upset that he didn’t find the intussusception himself. I continued to do a number of things like that. I diagnosed a patient with a brain tumor when he first came in, because I looked in his eyes and saw papilledema. To confirm what I was thinking, we sent him to the Tachikawa Referral Hospital [376th Station Hospital at Tachikawa Air Base] up in Tokyo. The doctor from there called asking who the physician was who diagnosed this? He was so impressed. I was kind of lucky though, because you rarely see papilledema. But if you don’t look, you never will. And then thirdly, although I had never seen methemoglobinemia, it was in my mind that I might see it sometime over there. A resident woke me up at 12:00 one night, and he said, “We’ve got one full-term baby who has died, and we’ve got two babies that are blue and in trouble.” I asked him on the phone which ones had been bottle-fed, and he said these three were the only ones who had been bottle-fed. I said, “Stop all of the feeding.” The blood of the two babies that were still alive was brown colored. We had an oxidative agent, methylene blue, but it was not sterilized, so we had to sterilize it. I’m not completely sure that we did it right. A young pediatric resident was there. When I injected the blue dye in and the blue baby turned pink, he couldn’t believe it. But, it was a good experience for him to just go through such a case. We stopped the feedings, except for the babies who were breast-fed. We got everything together — the cans of milk that had been diluted and the water samples. We found that the Zephrin used for instrument sterilization had nitrite in it and was the cause. DR. PEARSON:

You became a legend.

DR. JENKINS: I came back to Howard from Japan, and then went to Hopkins for my endocrinology fellowship. Incidentally, Hopkins had not taken any black trainees until 1952. I went there in 1963. DR. PEARSON: clinic there?

So then back to Howard and setting up the first endocrine

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DR. JENKINS: Yes. It really wasn’t easy, but I could do it because I had ready clinical material. At the DC General Hospital, there were many pediatric patients. I found a girl, whose parents were from the Dominican Republic, who had 5-alpha reductase deficiency. She was only the second case, and her case was classic. She was a very beautiful girl, who didn’t begin to virilize until she was 14 or so. We went through the whole diagnostic range of tests. These patients are XY genetically, but they don’t make the utilizable androgens in utero. Androgen synthesis is blocked, so even though they’re male genetically, they’re female anatomically and begin to masculinize at puberty. They can make testosterone, but can’t make the reduction steroid that differentiates the external genitalia. I lost track of her, but she did very well. We got a lot of mileage out of that, because there were no other patients reported at that time in this country. It was interesting that she came from the Dominican Republic where there are a number of these kinds of patients. This condition was the topic of a book titled, Middlesex[: A Novel] written by Jeffrey Eugenides. People are reading Middlesex because it was mentioned on The Oprah [Winfrey] Show and won a Pulitzer Prize. DR. PEARSON: You left Howard and Washington in 1969. I was impressed that you went to [University of] Nebraska [College of Medicine] of all places. How did that happen? DR. JENKINS: Here’s the way it happened. There was a fellow from Nebraska who was of German descent, and I don’t know whether you’ve read any of his papers. His name was Hobart [“Hobe”] Wiltse. He was with the world renowned Helen [C.] and Harold [E.] Harrisons at Hopkins. He was doing calcium studies, and we had interacted about our work. He was impressed with some of the work I was doing with aldosterone, and also my work with William [H.] Zinkham on testicular isozymes of testosterone. DR. PEARSON: of course.

That’s interesting. I knew Bill Zinkham as a hematologist,

DR. JENKINS: Well, it really was a South American who was with Bill Zinkham at the time, but Zinkham was interested. But, at any rate, I became interested, and we defined a “band X” on electrophoresis and found that band X was unique to the testicular tissue. That band X turned out to be related to the Y chromosome. That became pretty interesting. I lectured on it outside of this country, and other things related to sexuality — Florence, London and some other places. So even though it was kind of a happenstance thing, I got a lot of credit where credit was not really due. I don’t know if you’ve ever gotten credit for things that are not really yours. DR. PEARSON:

So this was the reason you went to Nebraska?

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DR. JENKINS: Yes. Hobart Wiltse was impressed with my work at Hopkins. Well, you may know the fellow from Brown [University], Robert [B.] Kugel, was also there then. He was a developmentalist. He wasn’t a researcher particularly. Also, there was a woman in Omaha who was extremely bright, and as a matter of fact I nominated her to the American Pediatric Society. Carol [R.] Angle was a nephrologist, but some of our work overlapped, and so, we worked together. It was really Wiltse that got me out to Nebraska because I respected him and his good brain. Incidentally, he just died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis [ALS] — terrible. I never would have gone to Nebraska but for him. Nebraska at that time was known as being very conservative, and I wouldn’t take a position except as a full professor. I wanted tenure, but they said I had to be there at least a year. However, there were some liberals there. Cecil [L.] Wittson, a psychiatrist, was the vice president for health affairs, and he was excellent, and Robert [B.] Kugel, chairman of pediatrics, who later became dean of the medical school. At any rate, Wiltse wanted some research in the pediatric department, and though I went out there mainly to set up research labs, I started an endocrine clinic and corralled a lot of patients that started coming in. I made ties with the American Indian reservations. Places like Rosebud, South Dakota and Wounded Knee, Nebraska, where the frequency congenital virilizing adrenal hyperplasia proved to be very high. I didn’t realize until later that American Indians have a much higher incidence of virilizing adrenal hyperplasia than do Europeans. The incidence in blacks is quite low, but of course there weren’t many blacks out there. When I went out there, I was about the only black professional at the [University of Nebraska] Medical Center. And here I was, chief of the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism, and vice-chairman of the Department of Pediatrics. I went out to develop endocrinology. There was, however, a faculty member in the Department of Internal Medicine who had an interest in some aspects of adult clinical endocrinology. Gordon [E.] Gibbs, another professor, had established research programs utilizing primates. He had been chairman of pediatrics at Maryland. He had a colony of apes which he had previously made diabetic, and he was following them long term to see if he could retard complications of vascular disease in diabetes. I think it was an excellent study, and I became interested in his work. But I really got to Nebraska because of Wiltse. It was a good time for me. DR. PEARSON:

Save the weather.

DR. JENKINS: Well, in Kansas I was used to that. But you’re right. I could go to work in the morning and the temperature was 32 degrees or so below zero, and then about 2:00 pm it’s up to nine below, and with strong winds that’s cold. DR. PEARSON:

And you stayed there for four years?

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DR. JENKINS:

Four years. And I got a lot done in four years.

DR. PEARSON: Yes. A lot of papers came from there. Then in 1973, Dr. Scott died and you got called back? DR. JENKINS: No, he didn’t die, he retired. He died in 2002, but he retired in 1973. That’s when I came back to Howard. DR. PEARSON: and anything else?

And you came back as chair and head of endocrinology,

DR. JENKINS: The dean asked me to chair a committee to write a ten year plan for the College of Medicine within a two year period. Here I’m building the department, working in adolescent medicine and endocrinology, and he asked me to do that, too. That plan turned out to be interesting and at least a third of it has been implemented to date. We got input from a lot of the department representatives, but I chaired the committee and wrote the final report. DR. PEARSON:

How big was your department when you became chair?

DR. JENKINS: I’m not absolutely sure. It was bigger than it is now in 2008, of course. When I became chair, Roland Scott had already started the child developmental program. In fact, he started the first one in the region. Genetics, which was going very well with Robert [F.] Murray [Jr.] from Howard and Verle [E.] Headings from Michigan, developed into the Department of Genetics and Human Genetics. Headings headed that division, and I participated in some lecturing from an endocrine standpoint. We graduated several PhDs, had a master’s degree program and an undergraduate genetic counselors program. We had the only genetics program in the city, and it still is, I think. That program is still under Headings. He’s past retirement age, but he has to stay on. They don’t have enough money to really keep that division going like it was. In fact, cytogenetics had a pediatrician, an East Indian named Rawatmal [B.] Surana, who became the head of the section and performed cytogenetic studies for other hospitals in the city. Later, he became director of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology [AFIP]. So I was somewhat fortunate in having a qualified and specialized staff, the size of which has decreased considerably. I didn’t have a big faculty, but I instituted many divisions and centers in the department, which existed on grant money. We were awarded over a million dollars a year in grant money, which wasn’t as difficult to obtain then as it is now. That money represented about 30 percent of the department’s budget. Roland Scott did the ground work, and I continued and extended it. DR. PEARSON:

You became emeritus in 1986?

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DR. JENKINS: In 1986. This was fairly early, because in 1986, I was 64 years old. But the reason was the school offered an early retirement plan that I could not resist. It included so many benefits — free health insurance for the rest of my life, and my wife’s, which would have cost me $500 a month now. They kept to that agreement along with the other kinds of concessions which they promised, and all of the other kinds of things they promised. I essentially was to receive the same salary as I made as chairman right on through. They haven’t gone up on the salary, but that was enough to carry me along. I’m very happy I did it. I don’t regret it at all. DR. PEARSON: Well, it also gave you a chance to do some other things we’ve talked about, like community service. Tell me about that. DR. JENKINS: That wasn’t the reason I retired. As far as the community work, I owe it to my wife, Maria, who has done really great community activities, and I assisted her. She was extraordinary. She first started out teaching tennis. She was a tennis player and brought it to an inner city school, Cleveland Elementary School, which is in the middle of the high drug area in DC. There had been two killings outside of the school during the time that we were there, one on the sidewalk and one on the school grounds. Maria would go into the neighborhood during the weekend and some parents would say, “Mrs. Jenkins, what are you doing here?” And they, of course, would protect her because they knew her, but she would go into any place in the area. Down there Maria set up a tennis program. The kids there didn’t know anything about tennis. Maria, how many students did you start out with? MRS. MARIA JENKINS: Ten boys and girls of ages seven through nine. DR. JENKINS: Yes, ten. She was able to set up that tennis program because she had a relationship with the DC [Washington] Tennis [and Education] Foundation [WTEF], which provided some volunteers and a coach. Some financial help came from the National Black Child Development Institute [Inc.] [NBCDI] in DC, of which we were members. The Institute was set up for black youths and their families and has affiliates in many states around the country. That organization adopted the Cleveland Elementary School, which I mentioned before. The National Black Child Development Institute was founded in 1970. At its height of existence, there were about 40 affiliates around the country, which came together once a year and presented a phenomenal annual meeting with workshops of high quality. It probably has not reached its potential, but has done a lot of good work in this country. Some of the affiliates are very strong, such as Atlanta and Chicago. The one in Montgomery County, Maryland remains fairly strong. Maria had been

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president of that one for two terms in 2000 – 2002, and I recently resigned as treasurer from its inception in 1996. The new national president is a PhD who has had a successful business in the District of Columbia for many years. You can tell that she is a dedicated leader and is trying to revitalize many of the local affiliates in the cities of the United States. I learned an awful lot about the inner city and about the strengths of the people. I want to give you an example. One of the smartest women I ever met was a single mother who had five children by five fathers. I don’t think I’ve ever met a more intelligent woman. I placed her on a panel at a national meeting with nothing but PhD participants, and although she had no formal training whatsoever, she took the show. I’ll talk more about her later. At any rate, with the Tennis Foundation and the coach, Maria was able to develop several tennis players, one or two of whom became very competitive. Unfortunately, none of them went further than high school tennis. MRS. MARIA JENKINS: They strayed from tennis when they went to junior/senior high school, along with the lack of interest on the part of parents. DR. JENKINS: Yes. We didn’t quite have the linkages that we needed to really do it. As long as they were in the Cleveland School in the inner city, which is in the heart of the crime ridden area, they continued to play, and that program continues today. Maria got me very interested being a mentor/ tutor. She set up mentoring programs in reading and mathematics for first and second graders and brought up to 24 tutors to the program. Did I go twice a week or once a week, Maria? MRS. MARIA JENKINS: Once a week. DR. JENKINS: Once a week. It was some of the most fun times I had. Each tutor was assigned one student to work with once a week for the entire academic year. We would let them read, or we would read. They couldn’t read in the beginning, but most of them succeeded after a period of time. With math, most of them had a natural ability in math, which hadn’t yet come out, so they couldn’t do the class work. Maria and I had a routine. We started with the base ten and fingers. They had to count on their fingers. They could understand it better when they were using their fingers. It was like an abacus. The abacus was impressive to me when I was in the Far East. I met some remarkable parents. One of these women was the mother of five children with five different fathers. You could see that she was special, because all of her children were doing so well. One child was in dancing and was coming along very well. What were some of the others, Maria? MRS. MARIA JENKINS: The eldest girl would write short stories. DR. JENKINS:

Not only could she write prose, but also poetry. The

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children had different fathers, but they all had their mother’s genes. The last father seemed to be pretty supportive, even though he didn’t have any education. This lady, she was very African and Muslim oriented, and she liked to wear Muslim clothes. She had an African background and knew a lot of African history. In fact, she knew African history back to the times of the black Nubians. The black Nubians helped develop Egypt and Ethiopia. They were the only people to conquer Egypt about 5,000 years ago. These black Nubians were the ones who introduced triangulation. Although they never built any big pyramids, their houses were triangular in shape for various reasons, and they were very good in mathematics, although the Greeks have been given a lot of credit for mathematics — Pythagoras and so forth — but the Nubians were exceptional. If you ever read anything about the black Nubians, you would be fascinated. I have some material on what they developed and how the Egyptians built upon their work. Now there are Nubians just south of Egypt who look more like Egyptians, but I’m talking about those that look more like Ethiopian Africans. Many Europeans now say that Egyptians are really not Africans, only the people that occupy the western and southern parts are Africans, and in this country. The Europeans and the Americans have tried to take Egypt out of Africa, but that is geographically incorrect. DR. PEARSON: Well, we from time to time get medical school applicants with Egyptian names who list themselves as African. DR. JENKINS: They do now. But at one time they didn’t. In fact, we had a cab driver when we were coming back from Florida who looked Egyptian, and we asked him, what are you? He said, “I’m an African from Egypt.” I hadn’t heard that. Before, they often said, “Egyptian.” At any rate, if you could read something on the black Nubians, which were closer to Egypt and mostly along the Nile River, it would be enlightening. DR. PEARSON: Let’s talk about some of the organizations that you’ve been involved with. You’ve had good academic credentials and been a member of the Society for Pediatric Research (SPR), American Pediatric Society (APS), the American Board of Pediatrics (ABP), and the Association of Medical School Pediatric Department Chairmen (AMSPDC). DR. JENKINS: Well, with the American Pediatric Society, I was on the executive committee. Drs. Beverly [C.] Morgan and Joseph [W.] St. Geme [Jr.] were also on the committee at that time. DR. PEARSON: I know that you were the first black appointed as an official examiner of the American Board of Pediatrics. I’ve heard that [F.] Howell Wright, the executive secretary of the ABP in the 1970s, was concerned about the lack of diversity of the Board.

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DR. JENKINS: well.

Maria picked that up. She didn’t relate to him very

DR. PEARSON: It was his concern that there were no women, no blacks and only a few Jews as examiners. DR. JENKINS: I was the first black. In fact, later I became vicepresident in 1982. But there were a many other organizations that I belonged to. The National Medical Association (NMA) was very important to me, and I followed Walter Combs as chairman of the Pediatric Section of the NMA in 1966. Roland Scott put a lot of time into the NMA, even though people were selecting him nationally for several positions and honors. He was very busy nationally with both the allergy and sickle cell programs around the country. I was very interested in the growth of the NMA. One of my papers that I could have presented at the SPR or APS, I actually delivered at the NMA. The Pediatric Section of the NMA is responsible for a lot of progressive activities. The Pediatric Section helped Renée [R.] Jenkins, who later became the first African-American to be elected president of the AAP [American Academy of Pediatrics] in 2007. I got Renée Jenkins into the NMA, and she worked hard. She is one of my protégés, as you may or may not know. At any rate, she went on through the hierarchy and later was chair of the Pediatric Section for two years. I encouraged her to join other important organizations like the Maternal and Child Health Research Grants Review Committee of the US Health Resources and Services Administration, which she chaired for several years. Renée has exceptional administrative skills and is also a visionary. It was easy to recruit her to Howard. She was anxious to join the Howard faculty because she had never been in a predominantly black educational facility. She graduated from Wayne State University [School of Medicine], and did her residency at Albert Einstein [College of Medicine] [Jacobi Medical Center] and Montefiore [Medical Center] hospitals in New York. I was fortunate because I could fulfill some of her aspirations. When she arrived, she had already received an invitation to present a paper on adolescent hypertension in Copenhagen, Denmark. So a month after her arrival, she had to take a week off to go to Copenhagen. Naturally, I was impressed with her. DR. PEARSON: I met Renée for the first time in 1992, when I was president of the AAP. We attended the national meeting of the Pediatric Section of the NMA, and I had lunch her and her husband. DR. JENKINS: At that time it was called the Ross Luncheon sponsored by Dewey Sehring. In August 2007, in Hawaii, it was formally named the Melvin E. Jenkins Pediatric Luncheon. It was a big honor when they renamed it, and I consider it one of the big honors I have received. Well, not as big as the one from The University of Kansas in 2005, when an archive of my letters and papers was established. That archive is probably my biggest

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honor. DR. PEARSON: And you have the Melvin [E.] Jenkins [MD] Lectureship [in Pediatrics] here at Howard. DR. JENKINS: Yes, I have that here at Howard, and it’s gone well. Do you know Phyllis [A.] Dennery in Philadelphia? Phyllis was one of our best students. We’ve had a lot of excellent students, but Phyllis was just phenomenal as a student. She presented the Seventh Melvin Jenkins Lecture last year. She is chief of the Division of Neonatology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and was named president of the SPR in 2007. DR. PEARSON: I gave the Second Roland B. Scott [MD Memorial] Lectureship [in Pediatrics] at Howard. DR. JENKINS:

I think I gave the Seventh Roland B. Scott Lecture.

DR. PEARSON: You know we’ve had some other overlaps. Do you remember a meeting in Philadelphia of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference [SCLC] in 1972? We both got [SCLC Philadelphia Chapter] Martin Luther King, Jr. [Medical Achievement] Awards for our work in sickle cell disease. DR. JENKINS:

Yes, we both got that award.

DR. PEARSON: can talk about?

Are there some other things that you have done that you

MRS. MARIA JENKINS: How about the Black Child Developmental Institute? DR. JENKINS: Yes, as mentioned earlier I got into that after I retired. I had no time before. The [National] Black Child Development Institute is an organization for the educational development of black children, particularly black males, because of the gap between black females and black males, predominantly in the inner cities. You may not realize it, but it is very wide. There are many black females that can really compete. But many black males cannot for a lot of reasons that are well known. I don’t have to go into that, but you probably know. This gap probably got started in slavery when the black male was essentially totally emasculated by their owners. One reason, I think, was sexuality, because it was thought that black males were sexually powerful, which probably wasn’t true. The owners embraced black females more and brought them into the masters’ houses where some acquired skills, like Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson. Sally Hemings probably looked European. She almost had to, because old man Welsh [John Wayles], Jefferson’s wife’s father, was also Sally’s father. There are no

25

pictures of her, but she probably looked European, because her mother had a European father, while her grandmother was one quarter African. So, Sally Hemings had a much less portion of African ancestry. I just saw a book by [Edward] Ball entitled, The Genetic Strand[: Exploring a Family History Through DNA], where he talks about his black great-grandmother and goes through blacks in his family. Very few European Americans will do that, though more are doing it today. His book is really interesting. DR. PEARSON: related.

Certainly, if you go to Google, you’ll find that we are all

DR. JENKINS: Do you know where the human race started? A lot of people think that it was black Africa. But it wasn’t black West Africa. The human race started in the south part of Egypt and Ethiopia in East Africa. Most people say that it began in Africa. They naturally don’t consider anything African except West Africa. The East Africans actually started the migration all over the world, and this is pretty well documented. DR. PEARSON:

With Y chromosomes.

DR. JENKINS:

And with mitochondrial DNA.

DR. PEARSON:

Let’s look to the future.

DR. JENKINS: I do have some things in the future that I’ve already committed myself to. At the onset, I would say that I’m concerned about pediatrics at this point. At one time, I began to worry about the intrusion of family practice into pediatrics. You recall those times. And we thought that if that happened, we might enter a period of “second class” care, particularly in complicated situations into which the family practice people were pushing. In fact, in my own experience they were pushing for supervisory control over inpatients, even though they had their own outpatient facilities. I resisted this personally. Even though the person who was head of family practice at Howard was an extraordinarily gifted person, and very competitive academically, I felt that the supervisory people for hospitalized children had to be people who were solidly interested and trained in pediatrics. You had to have that. I also felt that family practice trainees should be supervised by pediatricians. What happened was that some of the private family practice physicians had a hard time supervising in-patients. But be that as it may, I think a major difficulty is going to be in terms of pediatrics maintaining the comprehensive and holistic approach to the family and children in the future. One of the problems as I see it, and I don’t know whether I’m totally right on this, is that there is so much reliance on technical diagnostic capacity, even though some of the methodology is impeccable in terms of specificity. I’m also concerned that pediatrics and medicine are becoming more of a business than a profession. One of the important things that

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Roland B. Scott did for me, and I think for many other trainees too, was to emphasize very early how important the total approach to pediatric care was. There were two points that he really emphasized. Number one was the supportive, diagnostic, as well as the treatment role of nurses, particularly in the hospital setting. This is something that I didn’t do too much of, but Roland Scott did. He set up teaching sessions with nurses actually directing the sessions. I don’t think there were many programs back in 1946 that were doing that. He did, and I think it was very important. I give Dr. Scott a lot of credit for that activity, because I still think that it was the correct way to look at it in terms of a lot of support personnel, and probably even the clinical social workers and so forth. All of that type of action needs to go into the totality of care. The second thing he did was not related to nurses. He told us to pay attention to what grandmothers say. Most people used to laugh when he said that, but it was very important. I could see that he was right. Some people tell me even today that at some point, listening to a grandmother made a difference in the acute treatment or even the survival of a patient. Now, it is true that in today’s climate of medicine becoming more of a business, pediatrics may become the same. Children’s hospitals and other hospitals are becoming conglomerates, whose purpose is to dominate child care. Dominate probably is not the correct word. Instead shall I say, to control child care. I think this is going to be a problem in child health in the future. However, on the positive side of all that is happening, the pediatricians of today and the pediatric disciplines still have a focus on child care and child development as it relates to health and disease. I don’t think the business people fully appreciate this. Who will prevail I’m not sure, though I see a trend in all disciplines that disturb me. I see that some people in medicine and surgery are coming to realize the totality of patients. For example, Dr. Edward [E.] Cornwell [III] from Johns Hopkins is now at Howard as chief of surgery. He, a graduate of Howard University, was head of trauma at Hopkinsfor 20 years. I was impressed that a lot of his papers were on the socioeconomic bases of people who were killing each other with guns and weapons. When he transferred to Howard, his plan was to continue to emphasize the socioeconomic factors affecting people who commit traumatic episodes. I think that’s encouraging, but we need more medical people to take a holistic approach. DR. PEARSON:

Do you think super sub-specialization is hurting pediatrics?

DR. JENKINS: Absolutely. I can say that off the top of my head. I think it’s happening in all of medicine. Of course, one of the problems is that medicine has expanded so widely in terms of various specialties that I suppose there is a trend to do this. Even in my own health care, I can see some of that, because some specialists only think about laboratory diagnosis, sophisticated tests and so forth. They don’t, in my opinion, understand the real appreciation we should have about the holistic approach. I would like my doctors to talk to me. One thing I insisted on with my residents was that

27

I always made sure that a mid-level resident would be the first person and the only person to talk initially with the patient’s family. Dr. Scott emphasized who should communicate with the patient, and that was important, because the patient could talk to that one person who kept up with every activity relating to the child. They could talk with confidence to that resident and be assured that they were getting accurate information. DR. PEARSON: My son, my only doctor son, is a general pediatrician in the Yakima Valley in the state of Washington, and he supervises and teaches in a family practice residency there. The family practitioners call him very frequently for consultations. Well, you figure the average family practice residency has only six months of pediatrics. DR. JENKINS: We were fortunate at Howard where we had Dr. William [E.] Matory, who died in January 2009. He was a surgeon, but also an unusually in-depth physician from East St. Louis, Illinois. At Howard, he developed the continuing medical education [CME] program, the family practice program and renal dialysis unit, all of which went forward well. He was gifted and a tireless worker, and was also a researcher with his own laboratory. You know surgeons are not known for their laboratories, but he had one. I remember when he was doing abdominal pressures in dogs prior to surgery to see the effect of different pressures. Getting back to the future of pediatrics, and I think this relates to general medicine as well, one thing that worries me is that medicine, because of the controlling forces, is directly headed toward becoming a business rather than a profession. I think that’s frightening, although pediatrics is a little bit different, and I’ll tell you why. Pediatrics has many support disciplines which are also thinking about the future of children, like the one I mentioned before, the National Black Child Development Institute. Others such as the Children’s Defense Fund, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Johnson & Johnson and a number of other organizations are really looking at the future welfare of children and the role of children. If pediatrics can hold on, and I don’t know whether they can, but if they can hold on, it gives us some possibility that in the case of children, pediatrics might be able to survive as a profession, rather than a business. DR. PEARSON: Well, as you look back on your own career and practice, if you had to list a few of the things that have given you the most pride and satisfaction, what would they be? DR. JENKINS: Number one, without a doubt, is my trainees who have gone on to make significant contributions. For example, Renée Jenkins, who is no relative of mine even though we have the same last name and she calls me “Dad.” She has in all of her activities looked at the broad picture, and the broad picture of pediatrics in her view is a profession with a

28

comprehensive and practical approach to child care and development. She’s an adolescent medicine specialist, but her special emphasis is on pregnancy prevention in the early teen years. She’s done a lot of work on that, and she’s written articles on it. As you know, she has written the section on adolescent medicine in Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics, which is now edited by Richard [E.] Behrman. I think that it is very important that she gives me credit for influencing her. To think that I may have had an affect on other physicians and trainees, and there were a lot of them, like Renée Jenkins, who have said I did have an effect on them. The fact that they have said this makes me feel good. So that’s number one. Number two, I think, is my lifelong push for a research emphasis as a part of all medical thinking, including clinical practice. I have always said, and have written, that someone who has research projects exposure is a better practitioner because of the way he delves into the background synthesis. I’ve always stressed this at Howard University. I also stressed it in Nebraska in a program where I had a lot of input, even in general pediatrics. I was given the responsibility, along with some others, for pediatric training. The program was previously riddled with many didactic lectures and tests. Each year there were three or four students who did not pass the National Board [of Medical Examiners] exams. So it was decided to do away with pediatric lectures at the clinical level, although there were a few in basic sciences that we didn’t end. But at the clinical level, we did away with all pediatric lectures. And what we did, and some of us had to do more work, was to develop small discussion groups at the third year level. We did all of our teaching around a patient. It was mainly questions and answers — questions they would raise, or questions that we would raise. If we couldn’t resolve the issues, they had to research the data, read for themselves, and return and talk to us, and we would all discuss it. And do you know what? After about two years, we never had a single failure on the National Boards. It was assumed that this resulted from the fact that we had taught them how to think and forced them to read on their own. They could read on their own if they wanted to. Why did we as teachers have to read for them? I brought this back to Howard with me, and we improved there, too. I also put an emphasis on research, which was difficult to do at Howard University, because we didn’t have a lot of resources. We didn’t have a lot of money, despite our relationship with the federal government. It was difficult, but Roland Scott agreed, and actually insisted, that if a resident didn’t initiate a research project, he wasn’t going to be retained. I don’t remember him actually doing that, but he threatened to do it. I didn’t fall into that category, because I already had research experience when I arrived, but there were many who didn’t. I give Roland credit for that, because I think it was an extremely important base for the intern’s and resident’s growth. And that was number two. Number three, I think, was appreciating and fighting for the role of public

29

institutions and public policy toward an approach to health care that was not only supportive, but also had a component of public education, on a similar footing as preventative health. It is not on a level today that you would call ideal. Another feature that I espoused was support for research. That is a goal where we’ve seen some results. But in a world economy which is slipping, one can expect some reduction in research funding. As professionals, we still need to continue research. Actually, recent administrations have supported NIH research. Not at the level we would prefer and consider ideal, but at a level that was greater than what I expected them to do. I appreciate what the last administrations have done in terms of supporting research other than military research. In health-related research, I think they’ve done more than I’ve expected, and I’m proud to have helped. DR. PEARSON: What about the lack of support of access to medical care, which is a national scandal? DR. JENKINS: That’s right and I didn’t want to get into that, but it is. I hadn’t given as much thought to why this is as maybe I should have. But off the top of my head, the national scandal rests partly on the fact that we have slipped so much in this country as an international competitor, particularly when we compare ourselves to Asia, China or even Cuba. Some of the best doctors I have seen have been during my work in Guyana, South America, and have been Cuban doctors. These Cuban doctors are excellent care givers compared to a lot of our American doctors, and those from the Caribbean. For example, a Dr. [Randas] Batista, who had the same name as the predecessor of Fidel Castro, designed a surgical treatment for chronic congestive heart failure [Batista procedure]. What he did was to decrease the dilatation of the left ventricle by cutting out a part of the heart muscle. Although it probably hasn’t gone as far as it might have, it was work that had a firm research basis and represented possibilities. There have been a number of interventions in cardiac surgery. We just had the death of Dr. Michael [E.] DeBakey, one of the greats in Houston. When I traveled to Australia, I met a man at the Menzies [School of Health Research] by the name of John Mathews, who is British. He was interested in integrating aboriginal people into the modern scientific world. The original Australians wanted to solve their Aborigine minority problem, and the way they tried to do it was through forced intermarriage. Did you know that? What they did was to force intermarriage resulting in what we would call mulattoes — half Australian, half Aboriginal, like the great tennis player, Evonne [Fay] Goolagong [Crawley]. The mulattos were then forced to marry Australians, and the result would be a quadroon. Another forced marriage would result in an octoroon. By essentially forcing Aborigines to marry Australians, they would dilute the aboriginal blood into the Australian population. I don’t know any other country that has ever tried this method, but they did it on

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purpose, all in the name of religion. We were introduced at a party there to a lady named Barbara Cummings, who was a quadroon, with whom I discussed this issue. Barbara had written a book, Take This Child, and it’s about all of this. She is a sociologist and held gatherings of people like herself. The general feeling of these people was that they thought what the Australians were trying to do was a bad thing for them culturally. They had gone as far as creating their own passports, which the Australian government refused to acknowledge. I went into an Aborigine reservation there and saw some interesting things, one of which was the large number of kids. The Aborigine population wanted to maintain some self-identity, and particularly they’re interested in land redistribution. There was a government worker there whose last name was Ross, who was mixed with Aboriginal blood in him, though his last name was Ross, which is really Australian. He was responsible for land distribution and similar occupations. Now, Australia was all together different from New Zealand where the Maori natives were just ostracized. When we went there, people told us, “Don’t go up where the Maori are, because they’re going to steal your possessions.” We, nevertheless, went up and purposely interacted with some Maori natives. They were great people. We talked with them, and went to their markets and even bought fresh produce. We were very impressed with the potential of some of these people that the New Zealanders said were savages. DR. PEARSON: Well, there are some analogies, aren’t there, with what we’ve done with the American Indian? DR. JENKINS: Well, we wanted to destroy them. A lot of Americans don’t realize that. There were battles here and battles there. The Battle of Wounded Knee was a slaughter. DR. PEARSON: me about them?

We haven’t talked about your own family. Could you tell

DR. JENKINS: Well, you know my first wife Betty died at age 50 of metastatic breast cancer. Of course, those things are always very tragic personally, in terms of the family situation. Her family of eight was from rural Little Washington, Virginia. She later became a registered nurse when her elder sister, also an RN, took her and raised her in Philadelphia. She specialized in premature births. We had three children, all girls, who graduated from college and are well placed in the working world. My oldest daughter, who is now 59 years old, wanted to be a teacher since she was three years old, and that is the vocation she has chosen. She took her first teaching degree at the University of Nebraska while I was there, and came to Howard for her graduate years. She’s an outstanding teacher, who was elected Teacher of the Year from a suburban school in Tallahassee, Florida about ten years ago, and then became the runner up for the Teacher

31

of the Year for the state of Florida. That gave her a lot of exposure, because she interacted with Health, Education and Welfare Secretary [U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W.] Riley during visits to the District of Columbia, along with the woman who was the Teacher of the Year. After that, she was very well respected as an exemplary teacher in the Florida educational system. She works in a suburban school in Tallahassee. Her pupils are of middle class, and parental support is not lacking. She’s doing very well and plans to teach until retirement. She resides with her husband and two children, a boy and a girl, in Tallahassee. The middle daughter, whom I thought was going to pursue medicine, went into dental hygiene, and has become a very efficient dental hygienist. She and her family of four children and two grandchildren live in San Diego, California, where she is gainfully employed at a highly lucrative rate, three days a week. One of her boys is a member of a professional soccer team. The third daughter, Lore, who lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, developed multiple sclerosis [MS] at about age 42, but so far she has not developed any paralysis. She has some problems with tingling of her fingers and toes and has some eye problems, all of which relate to MS. She is on beta interferon medicine every week and has done very well. She entered the nursing profession with a master’s degree in nursing and another master’s degree as a nurse practitioner. She then went into teaching in a hospital setting. She’s currently a tenured, full professor at the Allegheny Center where she is utilizing her holistic nursing philosophy, which she’s written about. She has four children, one of whom has obtained his bachelor’s degree from Howard University, 16 year old twin boys, and a seven year old daughter. With her illness, sudden deterioration is a natural worry for me. My youngest step-daughter, Ingrid, who is Maria’s daughter, was recently promoted to senior vice president of a major financial housing corporation in this area. DR. PEARSON:

How many grandchildren?

DR. JENKINS: We have 11 grandchildren. I have ten, and Maria brought Ingrid into the picture. Well, she brought three children into our marriage, but her two boys died in early adulthood at ages 30 and 34. In addition, we have two great-grandchildren, a boy and a girl, from our second daughter. DR. PEARSON: I think that this about finishes us up. I want to tell you how much I enjoyed talking with you today. One of the real dividends was your descriptions and stories about Dr. Roland B. Scott. In 1993, when the American Academy of Pediatrics Oral History Project was just getting underway, I wanted to do Dr. Scott’s oral history. I called Renée Jenkins and learned that Dr. Scott

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would not be able to do one, so your recollections about him are very important history. I’m also very impressed to hear about your accomplishments, and about Howard University and Medical School and your 13 year tenure there as chairman. Finally, I’ve appreciated your stories, and I’ve learned a lot of interesting things. I’ll be sure to read Middlesex, and I’ll look up the black Nubians. Thank you, Mel and Maria, for having me in your home today.

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Index

Greenwood, Mary Magdalene, 3 Grigsby, Margaret, 14

A American Academy of Pediatrics, 24 American Board of Medical Specialties, 14 American Board of Pediatrics, 14, 23 American Medical Association, 14 American Pediatric Society, 19, 23, 24 Angle, Carol R., 19

H Harlem Hospital, 9 Harrison, Harold E., 18 Harrison, Helen C., 18 Headings, Verle E., 20 Hemings, Sally, 25, 26 Howard University, 1, 3, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 33 Howard University College of Medicine, 13

B Ball, Edward, 26 Bartter, Frederic Crosby, 11 Batista, Randas, 30 Black American West Museum, 13 Brasel, Jo Anne, 12 Brenneman, Joseph, 15 Brown, John, 1 Brown, Minnehaha, 13

J Japan, 16, 17 Jayhawkers, 1 Jefferson, Thomas, 25 Jenkins, Betty, 31 Jenkins, Ingrid, 32 Jenkins, Lore, 32 Jenkins, Marguerite, 3 Jenkins, Maria, 1, 6, 21, 22, 24, 32, 33 Jenkins, Renée R., 24, 28, 29, 32 Johns Hopkins Hospital, 12, 17, 18, 19, 27 Johnson, John Beauregard, 9

C Cleveland Elementary School, 15, 21, 22 Cobb, W. William Montague, 5 Cody, Buffalo Bill, 13 Combs, Walter, 24 Comer, James P., 12 Cornwell, Edward E., III, 27 Crawford, Robert P., 10 Cummings, Barbara, 31

K Kansas City, Kansas, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 15 Kansas City, Missouri, 1, 15 Karwaski, Ave, 12 Keitel, Hans G., 11 Kugel, Robert B., 19

D DC General Hospital, 18 DeBakey, Michael E., 30 Dennery, Phyllis A., 25 Denver, Colorado, 5, 13 Drash, Allan, 12 Drew, Charles Richard, 5, 9, 14

L Lincoln Hospital, 9

E

M

Eugenides, Jeffrey, 18

Maddox, Albert R., 3 Maddox, Charles, 3 Mathews, John, 30 Matory, William E., 28 McKusick, Victor A., 12 Melvin E. Jenkins Pediatric Luncheon, 24 Migeon, Claude J., 12 Moore, Carl V., 15 Morgan, Beverly C., 23 Murray, Robert F., Jr., 20

F Ferguson, Angela D., 9, 10 Flexner Report, 13 Fluellen, William, 6 Freedmen’s Hospital, 9, 12, 13

G General Adaptation Syndrome, 11, 12 Gibbs, Gordon E., 19 Goolagong [Crawley], Evonne Fay, 30

34

N

Smith, Alonzo de Grate, 14 Society for Pediatric Research, 23, 24, 25 St. Geme, Joseph W., Jr., 23 Stewart, Paul W., 13 Sumner High School, 6, 7 Surana, Rawatmal B., 20

National Black Child Development Institute, 21, 25, 28 National Board of Medical Examiners, 29 National Medical Association, 24

O

T

Opelika, Alabama, 2, 3

Tachikawa Air Base, 376th Station Hospital, 17

P

U

Pickett, Wilson, 13 Poindexter, Hildrus A., 14 Provident Hospital [Chicago], 9

University of Kansas, 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 24 University of Nebraska College of Medicine, 18, 19, 29 US Air Force, 13, 16 US National Institutes of Health, 11, 30

Q Quantrill, William Clarke, 1

V

R Veeder, Borden, 14

Raitu, Samuel, 12 Rimoin, David L., 12 Ruston, Louisiana, 3

W Washington Tennis and Education Foundation, 21, 22 Williams, Edward Vernon, 7 Wiltse, Hobart, 18, 19 Wittson, Cecil L., 19 Wright, F. Howell, 23

S Schlutz, Frederic W., 15 Scott, Roland B., 9, 10, 14, 15, 16, 20, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 32 Sedalia, Missouri, 3, 4 segregation, 5, 6, 7, 11, 14 Sehring, Dewey, 24 Selye, Hans, 11, 12 sickle cell disease, 9, 10, 11, 16, 24, 25

Z Zinkham, William H., 18

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51