Beyond the footnotes: The untold story of Marion Myles, Ph.D.

By Selika Sweet, M.D., FAAFP

JA Guest Writer

I first encountered the story of Marion Myles, Ph.D., while attending a Medical Reconciliation Conference, where I was given a copy of Pressures From All Sides: The University of Mississippi Medical Center in the 1960s. I read the book in a single day. As someone who has always loved history, especially Mississippi history, I experienced the same feeling I had after reading The Help. Once again, I was reminded that much of Mississippi’s African American history remains incomplete, with many important stories surviving only in the memories of those who lived them.

One chapter introduced readers to Dr. Marion Myles, the first African American faculty member with a Ph.D. appointed to the University of Mississippi Medical Center. The book carefully documents her appointment and the challenges of integration at UMC. Yet after finishing the chapter, I realized I knew another part of her story, one that could never be found in personnel files, board minutes, or institutional archives.

Dr. Myles was more than a pioneering faculty member.

She was a family friend.

When my father worked at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Jackson, my mother noticed a woman sleeping in a chair beside her hospitalized husband. At the time, the VA Hospital consisted of open wards, and family members often remained with loved ones for days or even weeks.

That woman was Dr. Marion Myles.

Dr. Myles was a pharmaceutical botanist who earned her doctorate from The Pennsylvania State University. Her doctoral dissertation was written in German, and she was fluent in both written and spoken German. My mother often remarked that doctoral candidates of that era were expected to demonstrate proficiency in a foreign language. Dr. Myles met that challenge with remarkable scholarship.

As UMC integrated during the 1960s, Dr. Myles was recruited from Alcorn A&M College to join the faculty. The move happened so quickly that she had nowhere to live. During the day she worked at UMC. At night she returned to the VA Hospital, where her husband remained a patient, and she slept in a chair beside him.

Recognizing her situation, my mother offered this woman she had only recently met a place to stay. Dr. Myles politely declined. After another night in the hospital, however, she accepted.

She lived with our family until she was able to obtain a trailer near Pocahontas in rural Hinds County.

I was about seven years old, wearing two pigtails and seeing the world through a child’s eyes. Whenever our family went on an outing, Dr. Myles often came along. She sat beside me in the back seat of our station wagon. She was petite, quiet, and thoughtful. In my young imagination, she reminded me of a little field mouse, gentle, observant, and never seeking attention. Only years later did I realize I had been sitting beside one of Mississippi’s pioneering scientists. Little did she know the influence she would have on my own life.

My mother often shared a story that revealed another side of Dr. Myles.

Shortly after Medgar Evers was assassinated on June 12, 1963, my mother was attending graduate school in Baton Rouge. During class, an instructor remarked, “You’re from where they shoot you in the back in the middle of the night.”

He had no idea that Medgar Evers had been a close family friend and that his murder was still a fresh and deep personal loss.

My mother left class in tears and called Dr. Myles.

She later told me, “Lord, I didn’t know she knew the professor and his colleagues.”

The very next day, the professor appeared subdued and apologized.

My mother always ended the story the same way.

“Dr. Myles carried weight.”

Those four words reveal something no official record can capture. Beyond her academic credentials, Dr. Myles commanded respect. She possessed influence, relationships, and quiet authority that extended well beyond the classroom and laboratory.

Years later, when my mother earned her master’s degree in biology from Southern University in Baton Rouge, Dr. Myles stood beside my father at her graduation. My mother’s own mother died giving birth to her, and her father died when she was only twelve years old. Present that day was my father, Dr. Myles, and my mother’s three children. There were more than guests. They were the family who had encouraged, supported, and celebrated her educational journey.

Their friendship endured throughout Dr. Myles’ years at UMC.

One section of Pressures From All Sides notes that some faculty and staff questioned Dr. Myles’ role, wondering exactly what she did and whether she had simply been hired because federal integration efforts required an African American faculty member.

Those questions were asked.

Yet I cannot help but wonder whether one of her greatest contributions has been overlooked.

During the 1960s, many of the world’s leading medical and pharmaceutical journals were still published in German. Given Dr. Myles’ scientific training and fluency in the language, I have often wondered whether she assisted faculty in translating or interpreting German scientific literature. I cannot say that she did without documentation, but it is a question worth exploring because it reflects the uncommon expertise she brought to Mississippi at a time when few American scientists possessed those skills.

The book also prompted other questions. What research was she conducting? What courses did she teach? What committees did she serve on? Who were her students? What influence did she have on the physicians and scientists who followed her?

These are questions worth asking because pioneers often leave contributions that extend far beyond what is preserved in official records.

One summer, after our family returned from a trip, we learned that Dr. Myles had died. I also remember hearing that personnel from UMC had already cleared out her trailer.

It seemed such a quiet ending for a remarkable scholar whose life had touched so many others.

Reading Pressures From All Sides reminded me that history is rarely complete when told from a single perspective. Institutional records preserve appointments, titles, and dates. Families preserve something different. They remember kindness, sacrifice, friendship, generosity, and the ordinary moments that reveal extraordinary people.

My purpose is not to revise the history presented in Pressures From All Sides. Rather, it is to broaden it. History is strongest when official records and experience are allowed to speak to one another.

Dr. Marion Myles deserves to be remembered not only as the first African American faculty member with a Ph.D. at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, but also as an accomplished pharmaceutical botanist, an exceptional scientist, a scholar fluent in German, a trusted mentor, and a woman whose quiet strength and generosity shaped the lives of those around her, including one little girl with pigtails riding beside her in the back seat of a station wagon.

Mississippi’s history is richest when it embraces both the official record and the memories of those who lived it. Sometimes the most meaningful chapters are not found in the footnotes of history. They are found in the lives that touched others so deeply that, decades later, their stories still deserve to be told.