Pictured is Ray E. Piper, DO (COM '60) the first African American graduate of the Kansas City College of Osteopathy and Surgery (now KCU). When Piper began his medical studies, Kansas City was a racially divided city, with minorities suffering discrimination in many areas including health care. In 1957 there was a sign of progress when the Kansas City city council voted to transfer the staff and patients of General Hospital No. 2, the segregated Black hospital, to General Hospital No. 1, the white hospital. Opened in 1930, General Hospital No. 2 had been built to replace the old municipal hospital that had become a hospital for Black patients after General Hospital No. 1 was completed. The municipal hospital had been built in 1878 and had fallen into disrepair, infested with rats and vermin, with plaster falling from the walls. Mental patients had to be chained to their beds to keep from harming other patients, interns had to live in the attic, and nurses lived in a framed building on the property with a leaky roof and little heat. General Hospital No. 2 was a vast improvement but still had problems. Never big enough, there were frequently patient beds in the halls and the space reserved for the morgue had no ventilation. Bodies of deceased patients had to carried across the lawn and down a flight of stairs to the basement of the nurses' residence. At least after the consolidation, Black physicians and nurses no longer had to secretly transport their patients underground through a steam tunnel that connected the two hospitals to use better equipment or supplies. (1)
Integration of the city's public hospitals was a slow process. In 1962 Black physician Dr. Samuel U. Rodgers did a survey and found these hospitals had few Black doctors on staff and, if they admitted Black patients at all, they were placed in separate accommodations from white patients. One large hospital that is still in operation had no Black employees or patients, and had denied entrance to a young Black woman who had shown up to volunteer as a candy striper. (2) If Dr. Rodgers had visited the osteopathic hospitals affiliated with KCCOS: Lakeside, Conley Maternity Hospital, Osteopathic Hospital at 11th and Harrison, or the college clinic on Independence Avenue, he would have found Black patients being treated and admitted into the same accommodations as white patients. (3)
Dr. Piper could have done his internship in Kansas City, but chose to go to Denver where he had received his undergraduate education and intern at the Rocky Mountain Osteopathic Hospital.
This postcard from the D'Angelo Library Archives depicts the hospital's second building constructed in 1950. The back of the postcard reads,"The Rocky Mountain Osteopathic Hospital was founded in 1920 to serve all patients, regardless of race, color or creed." Dr. Piper spent his career there, eventually becoming chief of staff. He was the first DO in Colorado certified by the American College of Osteopathic General Practitioners and the American Osteopathic Association. For many years he was the only Black osteopathic physician and surgeon in Colorado. (4)
Of course, African American physicians were discriminated against long before the 1950s. It could have been a factor in why Meta L. Christy, DO, recognized by the American Osteopathic Association as the first Black osteopath, left Pennsylvania after graduating from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1921 and ended up in Las Vegas, New Mexico. She spent the rest of her life there and according to a historic marker erected in her memory "...established her lifelong practice with quiet dignity when there were no women physicians or osteopaths in local hospitals and few Blacks in Las Vegas." (5) Sometimes the fight against racism in medicine became part of a larger movement.
Pictured above is William G. Anderson, DO with a group of students during his 2017 visit to the KCU campus. Dr. Anderson, alongside Rev. Ralph Abernathy and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. fought segregation and discrimination during the Civil Rights Movement. He also became the first African American president of the American Osteopathic Association. After graduating from Des Moines University College of Osteopathic Medicine 1956, and interning in Flint, Michigan, he returned to Albany, Georgia to practice based on community need. In the early 1960s many hospitals denied Black doctors hospital privileges so he often delivered babies in his office or at patient's homes.(6)
Dr. Anderson joined students in civil rights marches to push for the right to register to vote. He eventually founded and became the first president of the Albany Movement which spearheaded the civil rights movement in southwest Georgia. One protest march ended with Dr. Anderson being arrested and facing up to 20 years in prison. U. S. Attorney Robert Kennedy became involved and transferred the case to Detroit. The judge there suspended the sentence to one year's probation. His advice when speaking to the students at KCU was to build a career where there is a need, "Your decision should not be made on where it is easier. I'm going to go back to where I'm needed." (7)
Notes
1. www.pendergastkc.org/article/kansas-city's-black-public-hospital
2. Rodgers, Samuel. Kansas City General Hospital No. 2. Journal of the National Medical Association. 1962;54:5.
3. Email to the author from Kevin Hubbard, DO, 6/17/2020.
4. Ray Piper, DO funeral program, D'Angelo Library Archives.
5. www.nmhistoricwomen.org
6. www.thedo.osteopathic.org/2015/10/3-generations-of-dos-in-the-anderson-family-carry-on-a-proud-tradtion
7. www.kcumb.edu/civil-rights-leader-and-do-shares-sage-advice
Photo credits
1. Stethoscope 1960, Kansas City College of Osteopathy and Surgery.
2. Kansas City University.
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