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Doctors of Distinction By Jean Silver-Isenstadt, ’02 |
The presense of African-American students surprised not only some of the white-skinned members of the
class of
1955 on the
first
day
of
medical school, but Donald W. Stewart and Roderick
E. Charles were amazed themselves. “Whoa!” Stewart recalls
thinking. “This is strange.” Despite his status as a named
plaintiff in the 1951 lawsuit filed against the University for racial discrimination,
Stewart had “no inkling” that the medical school had also admitted
another African American that fall. Drs. Stewart and Charles will celebrate
their 50th reunion this spring, returning to a richly integrated campus
now led by Dr. Donald Wilson, an African-American dean. Recently, the two
men took the time to reflect with us on their careers, and on their historic
roles in Maryland’s system of higher education.
Donald W. Stewart
 Classmates Karl Sussman and Donald Stewart |
“ My father’s main philosophy for my sister, my brother, and me was ‘Get an education! Get an education!’ He drummed that into us so much.” With their parents’ encouragement, all three children went to college.
“ In 10th or 11th grade, I decided I wanted to be a dentist,” Stewart recalls. “I was impressed with a couple of local dentists who really seemed to be on the ball. All through high school and college, I was thinking about dentistry.” At that time, Stewart’s family was living in a house only half a block from the streetcar line that passed right through campus. Though the University of Maryland Dental School had yet to admit its first African-American student, Stewart applied. “I wanted to be at home,” he says. “My comfort level was at home.”
When he received a rejection letter suggesting that he could attend one of two black dental schools in other states, Stewart decided to challenge the decision. He contacted the top lawyer at the legal defense arm of the NAACP, Thurgood Marshall, who later became the lead attorney in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. “I knew I was being rejected because of my race,” says Stewart. “I was being graduated with highest honors from Morgan State, I didn’t have a criminal record, or any problem with my character.” Yet in 1950, the state was not obliged to admit black students to the University of Maryland dental or medical schools if it could identify a “colored facility” that authorities deemed “equal.” And it was willing to pay all costs for such an out-of-state education.
 Donald Stewart, '55 |
Stewart calls convenience his biggest motivator in fighting for admission
to Maryland. He was not trying to make history. “I tend to be a very low
key type of person, not very extroverted or confrontational,” he explains. “At
Morgan, I went to class, did my work, and went home.” The prospect of
being the only black student in the dental school did not phase him. “I
felt I could handle it. After all, this was a professional school. And although
I was somewhat apprehensive, I didn’t anticipate any serious problems.”
As a college senior, Stewart also didn’t anticipate that after meeting
with Thurgood Marshall and initiating a lawsuit, he would casually enroll in
a human physiology course so captivating that he lost interest in becoming
a dentist. “I was smitten by the way the human body works,” he
recalls. “I thought, if I become a physician, I can deal with the whole
body and not just the oral cavity. It hit me like a revelation.”
To Stewart’s relief, Thurgood Marshall was unflustered by this change
of heart. “So apply to the medical school,” he told me. “No
big deal,” recalls Stewart. Soon after submitting an application, Stewart
received the reply that if he would drop his lawsuit against the dental school,
then he would be considered for admission to the medical school. He agreed,
and after what seemed an inordinate wait, Stewart finally received a letter
of acceptance.
The transition to medical school went smoothly. In a class of about one hundred
students, Stewart felt generally welcome. Still, it was hard to miss the
atypical composition of his anatomy group: where the rest of the class was
divided alphabetically
into groups of four, Stewart found his dissection partners included Jonas
Cohen, Violet Samarodin, and Roderick Charles—two Jewish students (including
one of the classes’ four women), and the two African Americans—alphabetics
notwithstanding. Stewart says the four got along wonderfully.
In fact, Stewart’s most prominent memories of differential treatment
relate not to his classmates, who he says were “appropriately friendly
(I mean, I didn’t expect anyone to invite me to dinner),” but to
his time on the clinical wards. More than once, patients or staff presumed
Stewart was an orderly rather than a medical student. “Those people apologized
and seemed to be truly sorry about the mistake. It was an honest mistake, because
they just weren’t used to seeing black medical students,” he
says.
After flirting with the idea of pediatrics, Stewart decided to pursue residency
training in internal medicine. Baltimore’s Sinai Hospital felt like a
natural choice: it was close to home (always a priority); it was familiar because
Stewart had worked summers there as an emergency lab technician; and it was
predominantly Jewish. “I think Jewish people empathize with us because
they’ve been through this themselves,” says Stewart.
After internship, Stewart found himself drafted. He opted for the U.S. Air
Force and was stationed for two years at Otis Air Force Base in Cape Cod,
Massachusetts. “Tough
duty,” jokes Stewart, “but someone had to do it.” Following
his service, Stewart returned to Baltimore to complete his residency, with
one more year at Sinai Hospital and then two at the Veterans Administration
Hospital in Ft. Howard, Maryland. From there, he spent seven years in solo
practice before joining a group; since then, he has remained affiliated with
other physicians. Now 75 years old, Stewart continues to see patients as
an internist with the Towson-based group Clinical Associates, PA. He is a
former
attending physician at Provident, Lutheran and Sinai Hospitals as well as
Liberty Medical Center.
Married since 1983 to his second wife, Olivia, Stewart is father to six children
and grandfather to twelve. A deacon at Providence Baptist Church, Stewart
still plays tennis, serves as vice-chair of his church’s HIV/AIDS ministry,
and remains dedicated to his patients.
“ Over the years, I’ve often thought, ‘how come Roderick and
I were first?’” reflects Stewart. “Because I am sure there
were others who qualified and could have done what we did. I don’t know
about him, but I was die-hard and just didn’t want to go out-of-town. Also,
to the university’s credit, they probably realized that it was an idea
whose time had come.”
Roderick E. Charles
Also a Baltimore native, Roderick Charles took a more circuitous route to medical school. On his 17th birthday in 1944, he was voluntarily sworn into the U.S. Navy, having dropped out of high school to serve. A self-described “news junkie,” Charles remembers himself as a student who scored well on tests but didn’t apply himself in class, a street-boxing kid who read a lot at home but “wasn’t pleasant” at school.
When Charles was only five, his father, a tailor, died of a ruptured berry aneurysm. The following year, one of his two older sisters died of rheumatic fever. His mother, who had been a case worker for the welfare department and a secretary to the owner of the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper, then returned to high school in the hopes of finding a better job. She meanwhile supported the family by refurbishing fur coats.
 Roderick Charles, '55 |
In 1946, after completing two years of naval duty in the South Pacific, Charles finished high school through a veteran’s program that allowed students to take exams at their own pace. “You could finish third year English in two weeks if you were able,” says Charles. After graduation, the GI bill enabled him to enroll at Howard University, where he found himself most compelled by “people’s minds.” He studied literature, humanities, and philosophy, while friends and mentors encouraged him to consider a career in psychiatry.
Hoping that achieving the status of “first black medical student” at the University of Maryland would result in tuition scholarships, Charles sought to accelerate his studies. By the end of his first year at Howard, Charles had grown determined in this quest to be first. “I had a certain level of arrogance,” he admits. “I didn’t think I would die when I went to war. I didn’t think they could keep me out of medical school. I never worried about those things. I never worked at them.”
When he was admitted to Maryland, Charles did in fact receive full scholarships: 21/2 years tuition from the Bragg Home Fund, and 11/2 years tuition from Jewish Family Services. And his transition to medical school went well. “I had a lot of friends,” he says, “but intellectually I kept to myself.” He declined an invitation to join Phi Delta Epsilon, a mostly Jewish medical fraternity, and chose instead to live at home. Throughout medical school, he kept a continual side job pressing clothes—something he had done since childhood. His anatomy partners, including Donald Stewart, became some of his closest friends in medical school. Surprisingly, he notes, three of the four went on to become psychiatrists.
There were also frustrations. Charles recalls occasional professors making racial jokes in class “and then leaving quickly at the end of lecture before we could cuss them out.” He also remembers being denied service at a restaurant across the street from the hospital. But more prominently, he remembers that black patients were treated with less respect than white patients. “For the black female it was ‘Mary’; for the white female, it was ‘Mrs. Jones.’ For the white patient it was, ‘How is your abdomen?’; for the black patient, it was, ‘How is your tummy?’ “But,” he adds, “this seemed less true in pediatrics and psychiatry.”
 Roderick Charles is flanked by classmates Jonas Cohen and Roger Cornell. |
For years, Charles served on SUNY’s faculty council and on the admissions board, playing an important role in integrating the medical school. “I left the committee meetings with a headache every week,” he recalls. “It was tough even getting them to look at black applicants. It was a trip. But they learned. A couple of women on the committee were staunch allies. We were very verbal and antagonistic to others. A lot of the faculty thought that if they angered me, I’d have the students burn down the school or something.”
After serving five years on the admissions committee (where he fought vigilantly against the awarding of “brownie points” to children of alumni), Charles was invited by the dean to sit on a policy committee charged with formulating the rules and regulations governing the admissions committee. During these years, Charles also helped found, staff, and oversee operations of a free medical clinic fifty miles south of Buffalo, serving the needs of migrant farm workers.
In 2001, Charles retired from a career which blended private practice with part-time training of psychiatric residents. Father of two and grandfather of two, Charles reflects that his admission to a previously all white medical school was a good thing, but that racial inequities have always gone beyond educational access: “I’d rather see people get jobs and eat and not get beat up by the cops because they’re black.”
Both Drs. Stewart and Charles are looking forward to their return to campus this spring, knowing they will find an institution greatly transformed from the one they left 50 years ago. As Dr. Stewart says with satisfaction, “There was a lot of hoopla about our being admitted, but once we got things started, things changed.”