Under the auspices of Mass General Brigham Hospital a select group of resident doctors now better understand how the civil rights movement and the plight of healthcare intersect in the Mississippi Delta, past and present.

On September 18-19, 2024, a group of young resident doctors from Boston, Massachusetts, made a historic trek to the Mississippi Delta under the Leadership for Health Equity Pathway (LHEP) Project to see firsthand how healthcare and health equity are being addressed 60 years after Freedom Summer.

The resident doctors began their once-in-a-lifetime trip flying direct from Boston Logan Airport to Memphis International Airport. They then traveled to Mound Bayou, Mississippi, by charter bus with C & L Executive Transportation and their driver, Felix Ector.

Upon arrival to Mound Bayou, the group was met by this writer in her capacity as educational consultant who outlined the logistics of procuring and securing speakers, civil rights and healthcare destinations throughout the Mississippi Delta.  The resident doctors and their Mass General Brigham supervisors were very appreciative for the well organized tour that demonstrated how healthcare and political/legislative policies can prevent equitable distribution of health services.

The Mound Bayou Museum of African American Culture and History was the first stop. The museum director, Hermon Johnson Jr. led the group on an extensive tour of the museum that entailed the history of how the town of Mound Bayou was founded by Isaiah T. Montgomery in 1887, who led a group of freed slaves to form an all-Black township that was self-sufficient economically, socially, and had its own health system in the Taborian Hospital, which opened in 1942 by the International Order of Twelve Knights and Daughters of Tabor. According to Johnson, the museum tour guide, the town of Mound Bayou consisted of a Black colony of freed slaves from Davis Bend near Vicksburg that were previously owned by the brother of Thomas Jefferson, president of the Confederacy. The Taborian Hospital was staffed by all Black nurses and doctors and was equipped with operating rooms, an X-ray machine, incubators, an electrocardiograph, a blood bank, and a laboratory. The hospital operated entirely on membership dues and donations. 

The speaker for the Mound Bayou stops on the Delta tour was Hermon Johnson Sr., a 94-year-old previous mayor of Mound Bayou, civil rights activist, entrepreneur, and salesman for the Paul Revere Insurance Company. The elder Johnson expounded on his forming and leading of various civic groups that spearheaded the governance and upward mobility of Mound Bayou as a thriving Black community and town as he was an educated man who could read and write back in the 1900s. Afterward, the group was taken on a driving tour of present-day Mound Bayou narrated by Darryl Johnson, mayor emeritus of Mound Bayou. Several historical sites were identified throughout the town that once housed drugstores, churches, nightclubs, schools, and the home of Isaiah T. Montgomery. The museum staff provided a southern style lunch for the young doctors.

The first day in Mound Bayou concluded at The Delta Health Center Museum and the Dr. H. Jack Geiger Health Center, the first Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC), whose doors opened in 1965. The delegation was guided throughout the Center by Robin Boyles, the Chief Program Planning and Development Officer.

Dinner concluded with a presentation by Keith Johnson, a 31-year-old native of Glen Allan, Mississippi, an acclaimed blues musician and human resource specialist who informed the group of employment trends and the undereducated generational history of the people in the Mississippi Delta. He also discussed how low-level education has contributed to generational poverty in the Delta. Johnson also treated the group to a brief serenade of his original blues song, “Come To Mississippi” and a tribute song to his great uncle, McKinley Morganfield, aka, Muddy Waters. 

On the following day, the doctors visited the site of the Fannie Lou Hamer Cancer Center, which is currently under construction, and the Fannie Lou Hamer Memorial Garden in Ruleville, Mississippi. The group was given a verbal presentation by this writer, accounting for the life and trials of Hamer, a civil rights icon who challenged the seating of Mississippi’s all-white delegation to the 1964 Democratic National Convention and helped organize Freedom Summer. Hamer was a sharecropper on the Marlowe Plantation near Ruleville who was sterilized under a procedure deemed a “Mississippi Appendectomy” at the hands of a white doctor. Hamer died on March 14, 1977, from complications of high blood pressure and untreated Stage 4 breast cancer. 

The North Sunflower Hospital was the final destination of the Delta tour. The group heard from Sam Miller, COO/director of hospital operations, who praised the day-to-day functioning of different departments. Hospital CEO, Daniel Ceja gave the group the nuts and bolts of how the hospital operates regarding costs of services, the lack of rural patient transportation to the hospital, the hospital’s night clinic, and how Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements work for the hospital accounting department.

Freddie White-Johnson, founder and president of the Fannie Lou Hamer Cancer Center, gave the final presentation to the resident doctors while they were at the North Sunflower Hospital. White-Johnson informed the group through a brief personal account of her life and education as a native of Ruleville, Mississippi. She told the group why it was necessary to create the Fannie Lou Hamer Cancer Center, giving an in-depth accounting of how she and her staff have conducted over 400 cancer screenings, especially the screening of Black women and Black men in the Delta for prostate and breast cancer, respectively, who are disproportionately at high risk for cancer. 

The Mass General Brigham resident doctors concluded their trip to Mississippi by attending the Community Health Centers Association of Mississippi Conference with a focus on Civil Rights and Community Health Centers: A Tribute to Vision and Leadership in Biloxi at the Beau Rivage Resort. They were also given time to travel to the site of the civil rights protest Biloxi Wade-Ins (1959-1963) that took place at the then-segregated beach.