The following interviews were conducted in 2024 to document the barriers and discrimination that African Americans have experienced in obtaining access to medical care and health insurance in the Oakland/East Bay area from the late 1930s through the 1960s. They represent a key part of the data collected for this research project, because historical documentation on the subject is limited. As one interviewee characterized it, the challenges and difficulties facing African Americans have historically been invisible to white people in this community and throughout the United States. The project was commissioned by The California Endowment and conducted by the Alameda-Contra Costa Medical Association Community Foundation.
The interviewees are African American physicians, family members of deceased African American physicians, other health care professionals and leaders in the community, and a member of the clergy. Each of their stories documents two things: 1) the challenges that African American physicians and other health care professionals faced in gaining acceptance and uninhibited participation in the established “white” - medical delivery system, and; 2) the barriers African American patients faced in obtaining medical care and health care insurance in the Oakland/East Bay region.
The participants in these interviews were grateful for the opportunity to share their stories and considered it their duty to do so to ensure that the challenges, travails, and humiliations that African American caregivers and patients have suffered are not forgotten. And they expressed, both implicitly and explicitly, their concern that shortcomings still exist in creating and maintaining an adequate African American health care workforce and equal access to medical care for African American patients.
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Donald Waters, Project Director and Retired Executive Director of the Alameda-Contra Costa Medical Association
Interview with James Jackson CEO of AHS
Interview with Michael LeNoir, MD
Interview with Robert Mines, MD
Interview with Albert L. Brooks, MD
Interview with Brenda Drake
Interview with Calvin Wheeler, MD
Interview with John Norton, MD
Interview with Frank Staggers Jr. MD
Interview with Tolbert Small, MD
Interview with Superior Court Justice Winifred Smith
Interview with Richard Garcia, MD
Interview with Ralph Melton. MD (Just Audio)
Interview with David Kears (Just Audio)
Interview with Norton Simmons (Just Audio)
Interview with Joseph Clifton, MD (Audio Only)
Interview with Sadye Bishop RN (Audio Only)
Interview with John Simmons, MD