ANDREW A. BEST, M.D.

September 28, 2000

Interviewer: Marion Blackburn

Marion Blackburn: It is September 28, 2000 and I am speaking with Dr. Andrew Best.

Dr. Best: I am Dr. Andrew A. Best who has been a fixture in this community since January 1, 1954 and that makes my sojourn here in Greenville forty-five years, eight months and twenty-eight days.

Marion Blackburn: So, I guess what I was getting ready to say is that having read some of the transcripts that Ruth Moskop has done as well as just talking to people, your name has come up again and again. Dr. Trevathan, of course, he spoke very highly of you and it's very difficult to describe, I guess, the effects that it seems like you have had on health care in this area and I can only say that it must have been a lot of work.

Dr. Best: A lot of work and it was what some more difficult back then in the atmosphere under which we were working, this segregated atmosphere and you ran into so many of the different attitudes. Some people had a flexible and receptive attitude but there were other times and other people who just wouldn't open and we had to design and figure out a way to get around in an effort to get inside and the door is locked then I have got the job of designing and fixing the way and finding a way to get inside with the least possible damage. This is more or less a kind of an overview of our situation on the East Side of the Greenville community.

Marion Blackburn: Now specifically think about a time, Dr. Best, when a minority physician wasn't allowed to even practice in a hospital.

Dr. Best: I think it I might be helpful to you all if I were to relate the story of when finished my training and came after I finished medical school and had a medical degree and came out and did my training at American Army Hospital in Tacoma, Washington. It was back in the thirties and I was in the Reserves but I went back on active duty to my hospital training. At that time they called it internship and after a year on the West Coast I came East and was reassigned to Ft. Bragg Hospital and I was still on active duty in the Army and was assigned at Ft. Bragg for the next couple of years. I did further training and a part of that further extra service was do to my carrying out the agreement that the Army accepted me in the Army Internship Program, then I would give back to the Army a certain length of time which I never did. After that stint was over along about 1954, or late 1953, I came out of the Army and was looking around for somewhere to practice medicine. I was in family medicine and was interested in settling down to practice medicine.

Well, I was born and reared in Lenoir County over in Kinston and one thought was that I might come home to practice medicine.

Marion Blackburn: I have to ask you, when you were in Tacoma, Washington, did you find there was more racial openness there or did you find that there was still a feeling of segregation?

Dr. Best: In Tacoma, Washington as an intern out there was a wholly different atmosphere. The American Army Hospital was operated by the Army and by that time the Army had already integrated and I found no problems, well a few problems, so far as the internship experience at American Army Hospital. I didn't find any administrative problems but at the same time while I was there I did have a couple of experiences that might be proper right now to relate in the context. I was one of thirty-six interns who were graduate doctors from various medical schools all over the United States and there were thirty-six of us. Out of the thirty-six interns there were two minorities, me and one of my classmates from Maherry, a medical school in Atlanta,and we so far as the staff I would say and the administration we didn't find any problems. One incident was, on the jovial side, I was running the pediatric clinic and doing pre-school examinations and I had a young medical student who was doing summer work. He was in the Reserve and came back on active duty for the hospital and he and I were doing the physical examinations for pre-school kids. A lady showed up with a little pre-school six-year-old girl from the Canadian border and the child had not been used to seeing minority folks or black folks and all of a sudden, the room was full of parents and children and what not, and the girl said "Mama, Mama, he needs a bath" and I said "No honey, I don't need a bath, I just have a suntan" and everybody was tickled she said that and I am the Chief of the whole clinic and here is a little girl saying that he needs a bath, nobody had any notion as to how I would react. I could have reacted with a cursing spell of calling people a lot of names but at this point I could have pulled the whole clinic apart. I very quietly said "No honey, I have a suntan" and that broke the spell, the tension. The little brother who was not in for an examination and he was just accompanying the mother said "Mommy, Mommy, we want a suntan, we want a suntan" and everybody looked around and the little girl looked at me again and shook her head and said "No, Mommy, we don't want a suntan" and everybody got a big laugh of it. The young man who was helping was a basketball player in college and then went to medical school and we stayed about five miles from where this clinic was located and this young man rode with me and when we got out and got back in the car he said "Whew, I didn't know how in the world you were going to handle that and the situation was tense for a bit" and we got a big laugh out of it and he said when he thought the tension was over, this little boy comes back and he is wanting a suntan too. So, all is well that ends well and that was just a jovial incident but it really had to do with the fact of those kids not having seen minority folk. I understood what it was all about and instead of my making an explosion out of it, I just calmed it down and was quick to say I had a suntan and this young man and I we had a little joke between us and he called me the suntan kid.

Another incident while at American was while I was on the rotation on the OB/GYN Service there was an elderly white female who came into the clinic and the head of the clinic set up where the doctors rotated and whoever had the next empty cubicle where there was no doctor would see the next patient. When I walked in there was this lady laying in bed and she said "I want a doctor" and I told her I was a doctor, I am Lieutenant Best and I was ready to serve her and she said "I want a doctor of my own nationality" and I told her "I am that too, I think, I am an American, aren't you?" She asked me "What about color?" and I said "Oh, color is what you are concerned about and I said alright, I'll see if I can accommodate you" so I walked out and I told the chief nurse that the patient wanted a doctor of her color and I knew what the policy was and that was that at that hospital there was nondiscrimination, everybody was treated the very same and everybody was treated with respect and words to that effect. So the chief nurse took me to Hopp that is how you spell his name and I will never forget that and said what the consternation was and she asked what she was going to do about it. So Colonel Hopp, he was a full Colonel, Colonel Hopp said you tell the lady that if she wants treatment in this facility, Lt. Best will see her and if she doesn't want to see him, she will have to look for service elsewhere, she can't get it in this facility. So, the nurse who was a major, went back in and talked to her and the lady started crying and said her son was a Corporal in the Army and they were from Georgia and we haven't been used to this and all kinds of things so the nurse told her that if Dr. Best doesn't see her, Colonel Hopp said that she couldn't be seen in this facility and she told her she was going to give her a few minutes to make up her mind what she wanted. Of course, I was in the cubicle next door with only a small curtain between us, and I could hear what the nurse was saying and you knew I wasn't doing too much examining with the next patient that my ear was tuned to that what the nurse was saying and the conversation going on between her and this lady.

The lady finally said "Whew, I guess I have to see him" and she was in tears and so the nurse told me that when I finished with the patient I was with that I would go back and see her. When I finished the patient I was with I was in no hurry to get back in there and to me I guess I had a little attitude. I admit that I was not going to be rushing to get back to see her and that I was going to do everything else I got to do and then when I had the time I would go back to her. That was just my attitude and it was unspoken but I went back to her and asked her what I could do for her and asked her what were her complaints and I was talking to her just as nice as I could and she reluctantly would give the answers and I was kind of pulling the answers out of her and she was obviously hostile. As her hostility level rose my kindness and demeanor and diplomatic instincts kicked in. So it came to the point that she needed an examination and I was going to do the pelvic examination and I told her that the examination was going to be a little uncomfortable but we would make it as easy as we possibly can and we will try to find out if there is anything wrong. So sure enough there was what we call a pelvic lesion so I had the ladies bring in the equipment and we did a Pap smear and a biopsy and sure enough the biopsy came back showing first stage carcinoma. She was sent for and she came back to see the surgeons and what not but she went through a period at that time they were doing surgery where they would go in and take out the internal part of the cervical canal and clean that all out and treat it. She had to come back to the clinic for a follow up, I didn't see her the time she came back as she went to surgery, and after her surgery she came back to the clinic and much to everybody's surprise she asked the nurse "If it's alright with you, I would like to see Lieutenant Best" and the nurse said that I was busy but she thought that might be arranged. The whole staff knew the story very well about her rejection and all of this kind of thing, I hadn't talked about it but the news had gotten around, so she asked for me. When I walked back in and I talked with her and gave her reports and told her what the surgeons had done and I rechecked her and told her everything was looking fine to the naked eye. I told her I was very glad we could have given her this service and I kind of emphasized that we thought we had caught this malignancy in time and that she was cured rather than just pacified. She said "Lieutenant" and I turned back and said "Yes Maam", "Will you please excuse me" and I told her "That's alright, don't worry about it." The doctor told her that if this lesion hadn't been caught at that time that it would have been fatal. I told her it was quite all right and that I was glad I could have given this service and walked away. That is how I handled that particular incident. You know, I'll tell you how difficult my job was, not only to fight for good medicine but to fight the racial war also. After I finished that year of training I came on back to Ft. Bragg.

Marion Blackburn: You came back to Ft. Bragg?

Dr. Best: Yes, to Ft. Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina. I came back to North Carolina at my request and was putting in that extra time at Ft. Bragg and I had the advantage of the medical people at Ft. Bragg had an agreement with Duke Hospital and we had some very, very good clinicians. Dr. Albert Purser was one that comes to my memory who was one of the chiefs at Duke who would come in once a week to give lectures on various subjects and whatnot and it was a part of the training of the doctors who were working in the clinics at the hospital. It was more or less like a residency training. It wasn't called a residency then but that is in terms of today's medicine. So I was glad I was in that situation at Ft. Bragg.

Marion Blackburn: I am trying to imagine in the early fifties and you were ready to come back from Washington where there is not tension there and there certainly was not violence and you come back to the South and I guess its still a little early for the Knights and that sort of thing but definitely Jim Crow is still around and you are coming back, lets face it, Greenville was very deep in the South and it was not like it is today, very sophisticated. You were really coming back and you said earlier something about putting the fat on the fire, well you really came back to another place where you had to put the fat on the fire and you were right here in the middle of it.

Dr. Best: I did my post-graduate training at Ft. Bragg and I was going to leave the service to come and practice medicine out in the community and the question of where I was going was a very vital question for me. Should I go to Kinston back in Lenoir County where a lot of my acquaintances and friends and people who knew me from the times of development and they were telling me to come back to Kinston. At that point of my life I was interested in having access to staff privileges in the hospital. The hospital in Kinston was owned by a group of private doctors. The private doctor's staff of Lenoir Memorial Hospital was closed to minorities.

Marion Blackburn: You mean it was closed to minorities and that was it. They didn't even try to disguise it?

Dr. Best: No, they said they didn't have you guys on our staff. If you go in to apply or go in for an interview and they would tell you they were private and don't have you on our staff. At that time there were two minority doctors in Kinston, Dr. Harrison and Dr. Hannibal. If they had a patient that needed admitting they had to refer that patient to a white physician. Okay, they couldn't admit the patients. They could go in to visit that patient as any other family member but didn't even have the courtesy of being able to review the charts and see what was going on. Usually the relationship with the admitting physician was such that if he wanted to know anything on the chart it was an understanding with the staff that Dr. Harrison might want to look at the chart. Nobody would bother him but at the same time the barriers were there and so in looking around I came to Greenville and at that particular time the staff was open to minorities and I am told that a few years before I came on the scene that this new hospital, the one that is on Fifth Street, was built with aid of some federal funds.

Marion Blackburn: Was it the Hill Burton funds?

Dr. Best: Yes, Hill Burton and one of the requirements were if you were using those funds your staff had to be open. So the doctors who were here, Dr. Longino and Dr. Kelly were members of the staff and they were accepted and they were official members of the staff and finding a hospital nearby where I could apply and reasonably expect to be accepted on the staff. So, I forgot about Kinston and I came on and I settled in Greenville and, of course, where I grew up was about four or five miles this side of Kinston. Well, that was my home, my native home and this put me close enough, about eighteen or twenty miles of my birthplace where I could be of some assistance to my mother and the rest of my family. My father had died when I was actually a junior in high school. I was the only single son out of my mother's four. I had three brothers-there were four of us boys. I was the only one single and it was important for me that since I had been away in the service and then in medical school and whatnot and I had been away from home so it was important for me to be near in proximity of my mother so I could give her whatever aid or assistance that I possibly could. So, that was the decision for me to come to Greenville instead which was strictly and almost totally dictated by the absence of staff privileges at the hospital.

Marion Blackburn: At the same time am I right, you were not part of the rotation. There was still the sticking point, wasn't there, where minority physicians were not part of the regular rotation?

Dr. Best: Well, the staff privileges still left some things to be desired. First of all the hospital was segregated. All of one floor on the East Wing over at the hospital which was the first floor was known as the colored floor.

Marion Blackburn: For the sake of the archives I want to mention something-as I understand it, the colored floor there may be someone with pneumonia right beside one of the newborns.

Dr. Best: Well yes, that comes from the thing that I put on tape. Everything that was admitted to the first floor, the East Wing, was based on color alone. It might be the fact here was a mother with a newborn baby right beside a person with a case of pneumonia. Everything was jumbled up, mixed up there. Now, of course, I delivered babies in the Delivery Room but they couldn't even be admitted to the Newborn Nursery. Dr. Malene Irons will verify this and Dr. Malene Irons was one of the premier pediatricians in the area and I don't know if you have ever met her or not but she is a sweet person.

Marion Blackburn: Is that Dr. Tom Irons' mother?

Dr. Best: Yes, Tom Irons' mother. Tom grew up and was back and forth then and I would often tease Tom and I knew him better after he finished his medical training. I would tell Tom if he were as sweet as his mother was the world would be a whole lot better place. Tom was a very good-natured person and I like him a lot and I think he is very sweet. There is no higher respect I can have for anybody beyond Dr. Malene, I could never. So that is one of the things that Dr. Malene and I got accomplished on the next step. In the early sixties around 1964, Dr. Malene and I were concerned about the problem. She and I talked about it and she was very much concerned about newborns not being able to be admitted to the Newborn Nursery and they had at that particular time some equipment that came out called an isolette. The isolette was to assist the prematures and Dr. Malene had a premature case and she wanted to use one of the isolettes and she ran into some problems because all the isolettes had two or three units and they were in the Newborn Nursery. She ran into some problems there and after discussing it she and I got an audience with the staff . I don't recall exactly who was the chief of staff at that particular time but any rate we got an audience with the hospital staff and I was the spokesman. I pointed out to the staff that changes were on the way and they were going to be as inevitable as the night follows the day.

Marion Blackburn: How did you know that changes were on the way? A lot of people could not see it.

Dr. Best: Well I had a deep feeling to know that the tension that had been built up by seeing doors closed in the face and those experiences that I related back in the hospital and one was told very jokingly about whether I needed a bath or whether I had a suntan; and the other related was even at medical camp because of prejudice. So I had a feeling and I expressed it that changes were on the way and, of course, the civil rights protests all over this Country started out in Greensboro on February1, 1960 and spread on down to various lunch counters and there were whole waves of unrest which was very apparent all over the Country. My argument to the Board was that changes were coming and we can by our efforts accept these things or changes or possible changes, accept them and make some accommodations voluntarily or may wait for some outside force to come in to affect these same changes and if we do not take advantage of voluntarily change and be forced to change under the auspices of violent protests.

Marion Blackburn: For the archives, Dr. Best, at this time were you the only black physician practicing at Pitt County Memorial Hospital?

Dr. Best: Yes, I was the only black physician, the only black physician on the staff.

Marion Blackburn: So, not only were you a part of the wave but you could really say that you really started the wave?

Dr. Best: I wouldn't say I started it but I was a promoter. I was definitely a promoter and so they listened very intently and my observation at that time and I had a request outlined and one was that we admit patients based on their disease process, rather than based on color. If it was a surgical patient, send them to surgery; if it was a cardiac patient or whatever, whatever the category the patient fit in, admit the patient to the proper place in that context. I assumed that included all the Newborn Nursery stuff so a black person could use an isolette.

The second thing that bothered me as I recall was that in the hospital charts, the only minority that would be addressed was the title of either a doctor or a reverend. Everybody else if you were a minority you were Susie Smith, Jimmy Jones, John Thomas or whatever but on the other hand every white person admitted was Mr. J. B. Taft, Mrs. Susie Smith and what really got under my craw was when I looked over the charts here was an eight year old child, a little girl, Miss Victoria Jones and a seven year old boy, Master Jimmy Smith. On titles and all of that, my recommendation is title everybody or title nobody, take your choice. They soon figured out that in secretarial time and all the other things that it would be better to title nobody.

Marion Blackburn: Of course I have heard these stories and I have grown up living in a time where things which were this way were moving forward and so to me those kinds of details are very meaningful because they helped me to understand that as you put it earlier so well, not only were you trying to practice good medicine but you were dealing with some of the most insulting kinds of insults - insulting insults - and I cannot imagine what it must be like to know that because of your color, say your cousin or your family wouldn't be Mr. or Mrs. when a little six year old girl's would be Miss and just what indignation you might have felt.

Dr. Best: Well, I couldn't really in my mind justify that kind of a difference being made and, of course, the other thing about the hospital-they had dining facilities for the staff and the personnel and they had everything coming out of a common kitchen but you and I worked on the ward together all morning and when it was lunch time, we would go to lunch from 12:00 p.m. - 12:30 p.m. and when we would get downstairs and we got the tray, you got to go to the white section and I would go over here to the colored section. I called it a bunch of foolishness and so that was one of my recommendations that they take down those signs. You don't have to bother the kitchen and you don't have to bother the set up in those two dining areas-just take the signs down and let everybody go wherever they wanted to and you could get the nearest table you could find to your liking.

Marion Blackburn: So you were never, and once again this is simply because I grew up in a time when the concept was separate but equal, from the start.

Dr. Best: That's right, if it was separate it has got to be unequal and the other of course, were the water fountains-one for whites and for colored and we used to make a joke out of that and say that the white water must taste a little bit better than that colored water. Looking back on it, little quirks like that helped us to keep our sanity in terms of not only our accepting those conditions without trying to affect change, without the bias that might come along with it. In that particular area we were able to get and to our surprise the staff accepted it and approved it. There was a lot of background work done, I mean we basically went to the people that we thought we knew had a broader concept and had a flexible mind and we got enough of those people to agree to it that the diehards who voted against it were in the minority.

Marion Blackburn: This was the cafeteria, the nursery, and the titles. Was it a package deal?

Dr. Best: Well, yes what I outlined I asked in that outline that the hospital change. They went on and accepted the whole thing and so that effectively integrated the hospital. Now on the part of people will a lot of times will go by what they have been doing, several weeks passed before any of the minority personnel when they got their trays dined where they had been going even though the signs were gone.

Marion Blackburn: And before it had said colored section?

Dr. Best: On one side was the colored and on the other side was the white, which was before that. After they accepted, Dr. Malene's and my pleading, the signs went down. Then it was several weeks had passed and not a single black person had taken his tray and gone over to the area, which had been previously for whites. The way we began to get movement in that direction was there was one of the minority orderlies who was very close to me and his name was William and I said to Bill when are you going over to the integrated dining room and he said no. My schedule didn't call for me to eat in the middle of the day but I sacrificed and went out at 12:00 p.m. and Bill and I went to dinner and got our trays and we went over and plopped down in the middle of what had been the white area and we sat down and ate our dinner and put our trays back.

Marion Blackburn: Did you enjoy your lunch?

Dr. Best: By that time I was kind of feeling the vibrations of the feeling of accomplishment so that was a part of what I had to do to show to the rest of the minority people that nothing will come of it if you sit down over in the white side. We got it accomplished and we got the changes. I had been on the staff for at least twelve or thirteen years and I had never been asked to be the covering doctor or what we called the duty officer to stay in the hospital at night to cover emergency cases. They had two rosters where you had to pull duty; one was the day roster and the other was the weekend roster, which would start Saturday and go through Sunday. I had never been asked to be the duty officer, to sleep there, and the sleep in doctor was perhaps a doctor in the house, a house doctor to cover the emergency room. I never got asked - okay, after we got things settled upstairs, it was several months later the chief of staff called me and said he wanted to talk to me and I said okay. He told me he wanted to know if I would object or how would I react if they put my name on the duty roster. I told him to be my guest-just like that, no ifs, ands, just be my guest. So I was put on the duty roster and I would sleep there at night and when my weekend came up. The weekday would come around about once a month and the weekend roster would come about once every three to four months in that neighborhood, so it went on and it seemed to me that there was some reluctance among our white counterparts to think I could pull that kind of a duty and that I wouldn't run into a lot of rejections.

Marion Blackburn: May I ask what the chief of staff's name was, do you remember?

Dr. Best: I don't remember who was chief of staff at that particular time. I wouldn't want to put it in writing and not be sure. Anyway, I didn't have any thoughts of that I would have a lot of difficulty for several reasons. One was that from day one that I opened my office for practice I had a good practice. I had an open door and all you needed to do to qualify to get in to see me was to be sick to be a patient. That was the only badge you needed, if you were sick and you wanted me as your doctor I would accept you as a patient.

Marion Blackburn: Were there actually black physicians at the time or maybe black businesses that would not serve whites?

Dr. Best: No, black businesses usually would serve whites but the white businesses wouldn't serve some blacks.

Marion Blackburn: It was a one-sided deal?

Dr. Best: If a white person wanted to go see a black physician or a black dentist they could. We had a dentist here, Dr. C. R. Graves, who had a big practice and the majority of his practice, was white rather than black but we black folks had a hard time getting around the thing. In doctor's offices, my understanding was the doctor's offices had a black and a white waiting room designated. The black waiting room was usually some small place close to where the lavatory was and they would get all the stench from the lav and in many instances the black patient had to wait until the doctor finished with all of his white patients. Of course, I am sure that there were some times when you had an emergency would arrive when the white doctor had his attention diverted to maybe a black person, I am sure that happened sometimes; but that was the basic structure and, of course, at the same time just prior to our getting the hospital integrated in the early sixties maybe 1962 or 1963, there started in 1960 a volunteer group of citizens here headed by the Reverend Richard Ottoway, who was a white Episcopalian minister, Dick Ottoway. He called me one day and he came by the office and we sat down and talked. Having an idea that we did not want the community to be torn apart by violence and we felt that we ought to do something to iron out these various problems, the things that would cause violence and to move into an area of accommodation of the races. We formed what we called the Pitt County Interracial Committee and we had by invitation there were ten whites and ten blacks on this committee. All of these were volunteers, nobody was appointed but people who volunteered to serve.

Marion Blackburn: These were people who cared, I guess.

Dr. Best: Yes, people who cared and, of course, there were other people who were not officially on the committee but they were present and they felt free to come in and we encouraged that and we made no difference between those visitors and those people whose names were on the roll as members. This interracial committee was responsible for getting the lunch counters and public accommodations integrated. I am talking about public accommodations to motels and restaurants mostly and then was the story I believe it was a McLellans which was one of those chains of five and ten cent stores.

Marion Blackburn: I do remember McLellans and I used to like that store when I was little.

Dr. Best: Well, they had a lunch counter and most of the drug stores had lunch counters where you could go and get a drink, a soda and we were able to get those institutions integrated and that move was one of the factors that Dr. Malene Irons and I could use and during this conversation with the staff as I indicated that change was on the way.

Marion Blackburn: So that Committee started in 1960?

Dr. Best: Yes, about 1960 we started the Pitt County Interracial Committee.

Marion Blackburn: It sounds like Greenville was, as you say, thanks to efforts by say you and Dick Ottoway and Dr. Irons, D. D. Garrett.

Dr. Best: There was a guy who used to work at the Chrysler place. I don't remember who he is but he is retired now. Ed Waldrop at the Lincoln-Mercury place out on Memorial Place and Greenville Boulevard, of course I drive Lincoln's and I got him into a Lincoln because Ed Waldrop and I were both on the Interracial Committee and I used to drive Cadillac's and this was a fact. Ed asked me when I was going to drive a good car. I told him I liked the Lincoln alright, I guess, the way you all build that car the doors are hinged at the back and if you don't close it well that door flies open and when you are driving along the wind could pull the door off. I also told him suppose that door flies open and you are in traffic and somebody who is trying to pass you. So, we laughed it off and somewhere in the sixties, I believe the mid-sixties, Ed called me and told me he had new cars coming out now-as I had told him when they started hinging the rear doors at the front, let me know-and so he called me and told me he had a car for me. Ed is a terribly good guy. When Dick Ottoway left, the church assigned him somewhere, I think they sent him to England or Scotland or somewhere, because Dick was the President and I was the Vice-President, I moved up to be the President and Ed Waldrop became the Vice-President. We were active and doing things on the community level and we didn't phase out until after the mechanism for the Human Relations Council established by Terry Sanford's executive order called the Good Neighbor Council. That was when Terry Sanford came on board in January of 1961 as Governor, I guess that is the date, he was elected in 1960 the election year and he was inaugurated in early 1961. But after Terry Sanford's executive order with the Good Neighbor Council and that went on for about four years and then after he left office Dan Moore came to be Governor and the Good Neighbor Council was one of the political footballs to be tossed in the campaign of 1964 and there was some evidence that Dan Moore would probably disband the Good Neighbor Council as one of the things that Terry Sanford had formulated and he really in the heat of that campaign Dan was kind of quiet on that particular issue. When he was asked he said he didn't know what he was going to do about that. Anyway, as luck would have it when Dan Moore was inaugurated he appointed the Director of this Good Neighbor Council, which had been kicked around by the politicians, a fellow named Dave Coltrain. Dave Coltrain was a good friend of Dan Moore in previous days and got to be the Executive Director of the Good Neighbor Council. Through Dave's personal influence with Dan Moore we were able, this man, Dave Coltrain almost single handedly got Dan Moore to support the concept of having a Human Relations Council created by the Legislature to replace or strengthen the position of human relations by the promotion of human relations in the State of North Carolina. I would call that really a coup de grace for Dave Coltrain.

Marion Blackburn: Was he white or black?

Dr. Best: Dave Coltrain was white. He was a long-time friend of Governor Dan Moore. The black community had a lot of concerns in that Governor's race too because we were supporting a fellow out of Greensboro who did not get elected. It was a close election.

Marion Blackburn: Was Ed Waldrop white?

Dr. Best: Ed Waldrop was white. The whole concept of moving human relations forward-I want to put into fact that the Pitt County Integration Committee was kind of an integrated volunteer group. One of the things that Dave Coltrain did and he used me and we got to know each other as one of the main aides in developing the mechanism and structure of the Human Relations and through rather combined efforts Dave Coltrain had an Eastern Division and a Western Division. I chaired, at his request, the Eastern Division and I forget who chaired the Western Division. But the beauty of it was we got every city and in some instances it might be the county to establish a local Human Relations Council and its job would be to promote relations and hopefully that you would get things accomplished without violence and by diplomatic and volunteer efforts.

Marion Blackburn: I have to ask you this at this point-you said something earlier that I didn't expect, Dr. Best. You said that when you had that lunch in the cafeteria at the hospital, I would think that you might have been feeling fear or feeling nervous and you said you were feeling a little bit of that sense of accomplishment and you are Chairman of the Eastern Division of the Human Relations Council appointed by someone who serves the Government. Are you at this time feeling that nice wave of accomplishment?

Dr. Best: Well it is kind of satisfying when you see the results of your efforts and there is nothing to feel egotistical about but a sense of feeling that this is something that I was glad I was here to get this done the way it was done. That is the way I have always felt and all my mottos have been in giving service for the sake of service-not expecting any accolades, no praise and, of course, you are mentally attuned to accept whatever criticism comes along with it; if you don't agree with me I don't have any fight about your disagreement but I just disagree and I keep on doing the things I am trying to do and believing that I can be effective. That's the whole story in a nutshell.

Marion Blackburn: I have another question to ask you that is in the back of my mind, you say "service for the sake of service." It seems very easy for me or anybody to say wow; this was just a straight path with Dr. Best. He came to Greenville and he knew what he wanted to do and he did it. What I am thinking in the back of my head is that true or did you just find yourself in the middle of something you knew you had to do something about or did you come with a passion, did you come with a plan to make a big difference?

Dr. Best: Well, it's not totally that. I just, my philosophy was that I had to represent the result of first of all my upbringing from things that were taught to me by my mother and my father and values that were promoted in the language of a farm boy, we would fertilize and cultivate it, by whom a lot of people who affected my life like my high-school teachers. Then when I went off to college up at A&T in Greensboro. I had some
professors up there who were very meaningful to my life. The people that I have come in contact with who had a similar philosophy that I had. I'll tell you some points. I came to Greenville as an unknown, a country boy from Lenoir County and in a couple of years, you know, there were some things that I might promote, ideas that I might throw out, I had been accused of being an outsider. They would say I came from up yonder in the country. The things that nobody else would have dared to express or dared to do, you know, I laid hands on it. In Greenville in my work here in many instances after I got to know Dr. Leo Jenkins and he got to know and respect me it was impossible for anybody to ever know the desire of a relationship of two people-Andrew Best and Leo Jenkins.
We had a respect for each other and the confidence and the ability to see and call the right shots at the right time.

Marion Blackburn: That is a very big thing.

Dr. Best: Case in point-Dr. Leo made some of these other advances one night and we got to know each other well enough I called him Leo and he called me Andy. Of course in public it was Dr. Jenkins and it was Dr. Best but I told him that I needed to talk to him. He asked me what I wanted to talk to him about and I told him that I would go by his office and talk with him. Just like that I asked him why he couldn't integrate this great university without a court order. I said to Leo we could integrate this university without a court order and it was better to do it that way. He told me he had a couple of concerns. I told him to tell me what they were and he said that in the first place he would hate to admit but they couldn't cut it, meaning just that they didn't have the academic ability to matriculate and to keep up and we would flunk out. I told him that I was sure that he was aware with that the evening class that fourteen week course, that evening class every Wednesday that I would see an average of 375 minority students coming to Greenville to hear what I had to say about things, from as far West as Goldsboro and from as far East as Elizabeth City.

Marion Blackburn: Was that a course you were teaching?

Dr. Best: Yes this was about the first of April, and we would invite high school students, we would invite juniors and senior students mainly, from minority high schools from the area and they would meet here in Greenville and the course was exciting; it grew out of some things that were in the paper-- illegitimacy rate among blacks with so much big headlines in the paper or the minority to me was that this had something to do and had some ties with the fact of ignorance where the kids don't know, they are so poverty stricken they don't have, and ultimately they just didn't care anymore. What you have to do about it is the educating and so I called a lady who was the Assistant Superintendent of City Schools and city schools and county schools were separated in the county. We talked about it and, of course, we agreed, and I agreed and by invitation I would invite these students. We started off here in Pitt County and then we spread to other counties. We called that, of course, knowing the political and all of the other things that we would be accused of, we called a volunteer course in Correlative Education where we tried to correlate the entire curriculum in line of its importance. English is important to be sure that we recognize the importance of every subject in the curriculum and would give the whole picture. Along at the same time we slipped in a special emphasis on contagious diseases where we would try to get into health and the whole spectrum of contagious diseases has to be included, sexually transmitted diseases.

Marion Blackburn: That was very smart.

Dr. Best: At that time if you talked about sex education in Greenville they would run you out of town at midnight-that was a no no. We were able in this correlative education course to talk about this and mental health was coming into play at that time and we had a section on mental health. I went to the definition of the World Health Organization for a definition. From the holistic standpoint what was the definition for health. Health may be defined as physical, mental and moral soundness for the well being; freedom from disease, and what is a disease; a disease is any deviation from the normal state of health. With that kind of a philosophical and very concentrated effort we were able to get kids to start seeing things and the light of the whole picture, the big picture. One night one of the kids that I was talking about had a little math problem and I told him you had to be totally specific and totally correct and everything we did across the spectrum of the high school curriculum we did that and we got kids thinking. Back to me and Dr. Jenkins, you see, he knew about some this work and I didn't have to prove it at all to him and I told him that I saw about 350 kids every week, every Wednesday night, and I know who can cut it and who can't. I told him I could give him 100 kids right now and I knew them by their first names who were smart enough to cut it. He said all right and I asked him what was his other concern. He said that he and I know the legalities of the rednecks out here and at that particular moment, at that very moment, James Meredith down in Mississippi was having to be accompanied to class by having this bodyguard; in the room he had bodyguards, when he went to lunch he had bodyguards and Dr. Jenkins said he would hate to get into a situation like James Meredith where the National Guard had to be called out. I told him that I had given that some thought too and told him I had really thought about this one and I was ready for him on this one. I told him I had a young lady who is very smart; she lives here in Pitt County so she has a reason to come to East Carolina, geographically. I told him that I had already talked with her father and he has agreed to buy her a car so she can live at home and be transported back and forth to school; she didn't have to live in a dormitory. I told him if we had a minority kid being used to being seen on campus, even by some of the summer rednecks, and maybe people would accept her and maybe for the next time around and folks would come in assigned to dormitories it wouldn't be any big thing to them and they would accept this. It is just like a wedge; if you are driving a wedge in a log and some of that wedge is going in it is getting larger and larger. He called his secretary and told her to give Dr. Best an application for a minority and told me to have the young lady go and apply. Anyway, applied and she came and I told Leo as a backup I told him that I had told this young lady that my house would be her home away from home. I told her that I was not there all the time but my housekeeper is there and she could come in and out any time she gets ready. If the snow comes or a rainstorm and if she doesn't want to drive home she doesn't have to. I told Leo that I had also told her if she got tired of looking at some of these rednecks she could still come to my house. It worked and she did well and the next time we had a whole group of minority students and from that point it gradually went up and we got athletes playing basketball and football, and from that point the doors sprang open. It all started from that beginning of a conversation with Dr. Jenkins and me when I said we should integrate this university without a court order. So you see, all of these things are connected. The Integration Committee accomplished the lunch counters and the public accommodations at the restaurants and the hotels and what not.

Incidentally, when the Holiday Inn up here on Memorial Drive was being built and almost ready to open I took it on myself as one person and didn't say anything to anybody about it and I left my office about 3:00 one evening and went up there and looked around and I saw a gentleman, kind of a well-dressed gentleman, and I said that I was Dr. Andrew Best and I would like to see the person who was going to manage this facility when you open. He told me he was the person and I told him I just wanted to talk to him and see if he would consider maybe opening up this facility on an integrated basis. He told me he was going to be right fair about it with me and tell me it would be over his dead body. I told him okay and that he better hurry up and die sir because the change is coming. I told him you may not do it then but this would happen by either evolution or by revolution it is coming and I told him to take his choice. I said I would rather see it by evolution and woe be unto us if we reach and get caught up in revolution.

Marion Blackburn: Revolution, of course, did come but not here.

Dr. Best: I was talking about the revolution that is accompanied and fueled by violence, that's why I was kind of narrowing it down, but evolution by my own definition were the things that we sit down and decided to do based on common interest and common concern and common judgment and common sense.

Marion Blackburn: Absolutely, and as a matter of fact I just recently was looking at some pictures of the students in Alabama who went to the college there and the jeering and the taunts and the kicks and just the terrible things that happened and when I think of that I think of revolution or violence and, of course, the real riots that came later and were so disruptive in so many places that did not happen here, at least not the way they did in other places.

Dr. Best: This is a positive story that the contribution that I have made been able to have on a statewide basis really. I routed and grounded and changed in the minds and hearts of people by getting them to see the value of people accommodating each other's viewpoints without ever coming to violence. Of course, we have been fairly successful in that particular area.

Marion Blackburn: Did the hotel open up integrated?

Dr. Best: No, it didn't but soon after when we got all of the lunch counters to agree and all of the other motels and hotels around to agree on a certain date at the same time to open doors. By that time the Holiday Inn maybe had been open less than three months and with all the rest of the hotels and motels in Greenville, they had to change their policy and I believe that this particular guy that I had talked to was no longer the manager.

Marion Blackburn: So he didn't have to die. Dr. Best, it would seem to me that a lot of this, and I am sure you don't want to brag on yourself, but I have to say it sounds like a lot of the changes that took place had to do with your personal, the peacefulness maybe that you had inside of you despite the situation and your willingness to laugh or to talk rather than to get angry. Tell me a little bit about maybe some of your personal things. Did you ever have personal struggles when you wanted to get angry, at the hospital when like patients; I remember the story of one patient who didn't you to see her because of your color when you were on the rotation. I read that in Ruth's transcript. Even going back to some of the other things we have talked about, did you ever say you couldn't do this anymore that you were just a human being, I want to practice medicine and these people won't give me a chance and it's making me real mad and I am quitting?

Dr. Best: No, no, never, I have never had a single thought. I have always been able to face the fact that another person's view or criticism or anger, the brick that is thrown at me, that I am not going to let them make me deter my way from a path that is human and that I believe in. In other words, if you call me and say "you nigger you", I would never retaliate by saying "you're" white trash." No, no, that's not me. I have often believed in something that my mother used to say and that was to kill a person with kindness, if you're going to kill them, kill them with kindness. It seems like I am at peace with myself now if there comes a confrontation and where you and I seem not to agree I would say we can agree to disagree, think about it and see if you can bring yourself around to my point of view. I say that I am convinced that I am right but I would give them time to think about it and if you thought about it and you wanted to talk about it further, okay fine and if not, you just have to go your way and take the consequences for good or for bad. It is just that you are two different people.

Marion Blackburn: We have talked so much, Dr. Best, about these types of things that were so important to you, we haven't talked very much about medicine. I just want to ask you briefly a little bit about your experiences as a doctor in bringing health care either to the black community or to the community at large because not only was this an area of racial ignorance, it was also in many ways an area of medical ignorance. There wasn't a lot of health care available; there certainly were not many specialists, people ate a lot of bad food and smoked a lot. Tell me a little bit about bringing health care.

Dr. Best: Well, my visions and my aims with health care was to practice medicine from the concept of what I said a while ago from the holistic approach to health care with an emphasis on preventive medicine. I have always in my mind that of the two lines of medicine that either you use preventive medicine or curative medicine. Prevent what you can and that what you can't prevent you have to try to work to cure it, if possible. I have always been on the side for preventive medicine.

Marion Blackburn: You were ahead of your time.

Dr. Best: Whatever I could do and I have always depended on education as being one of the foundation stones, if you please, of preventive medicine where that person armed with adequate information can help me to help them prevent the disease process. Of course, those that slipped through the cracks, we do what we can to cure them through what I knew myself and I have always had a healthy respect and a wide use of consultants. I told myself many, many times when I am talking to myself and I said okay, I am good but I am not God. I know a few things but I don't know everything and along with that I would not hesitate to call in a shall I say, a consultant in whatever specialty that might be necessary or to give his opinion and to care for a patient. I wouldn't sit and wait two hours and let you get sicker and sicker when it wasn't clear to me exactly what was making you sick so an early use of the consultants and the backup people has been almost an untold jewel or an untold brick in whatever success I have had. I have run into doctors who would let you die almost before they would admit that they didn't know exactly what was happening. I would hurry up and call the consultant. It was an attitude or approach and I think that, I am trying to wind up and get you something that you might use in the fiftieth heritage now.

On the side of my relationships with the staff here at the hospital, there have always been people who were ready, willing and able to give service or to come to my diagnostic rescue. There was always somebody that I could call. There were people in family medicine like the late Dr. Herbert Hadley who was a very good friend and he covered me a lot of times when other black guys would find a reason or an excuse and would tell me they would like to cover for me but my wife has already got me committed to go to the beach with her or whatever, but Herbert Hadley would always stretch a point. There were others too but he came to mind from Family Practice. Dr. Ray Minges who was a surgeon, he made his money from Pepsi Cola, he was a member of the Pepsi people, and Ray practiced medicine really as a hobby and he was always a friend that I could depend on and he has operated on many folks when he knew he wouldn't get a dime for it but it was my patient, money or no money, and that patient needed surgery, that patient got the surgery and no complaints from Ray Minges. Being a doctor, of course, and one of the Minges millionaires, the program that I mentioned that I had for these kids, Ray supported that financially. He saw the need of what I was doing and sometimes he would tell me he didn't see how in the world I found the time to do it. I told him he told me to call me when I needed him and one day I told him I needed about $500 to do some things to give a little scholarship here and he told me okay and he told me that his wife and I spent more of his money than he did. I told him to just think who he was and she was his wife and I was his friend. We had a relationship that was very, very good.

I have no regrets of the goodness of a whole lot of people whose names I could call and I have such a pure love and understanding and satisfaction out of those good people that I can't ignore-now there were two or three people around in the background who tried to undercut me and did some little things that were not so kosher and made things a little difficult for me but I was always able to rise above those and bridge the gap that those might make with some of the goodness of some of the others. I have no regrets on that.

Marion Blackburn: I have another question that I have to ask you. Dr. Best, I am tempted to ask this question two ways so I am going to let you choose. If you were talking, you were sitting right here today with say a twenty-two year old young man who was getting ready to go to medical school and you knew that the young man was going to come back here and practice medicine, either a young black man or a young white or a young woman for that matter, what would you say to that person? You may want to say if it were a young black doctor I would to say this and if it were a young white doctor or young woman doctor, in other words, what would you say to that young medical student?

Dr. Best: I would speak in terms of the realities of medical service, of producing medical service, giving medical, the realities as it is today, not the realities like when I came through because in the day of all these sophisticated tests and the computers and all the other things that go along with it, my advice would be to get a good, well-grounded and well-founded education in medicine; keep your focus on the delivery of quality care; don't be afraid to call for consultant help; and above all, be sure that you are in the branch of medicine or in the specialty of medicine that you yourself enjoy. If you enjoy people than the practice of internal medicine with all of its aspects-sometimes you will find some internists who will go off in cardiology and some confine themselves to a certain narrow branch of what the internists used to see but be true to yourself. If for example, if you like research, if you like the technicalities of finding out why this or that in the other and you hate being bothered with people, don't go in to enter the primary care specialties, pediatrics, internal medicine or family practice. If you want to be in medicine and you hate people, get yourself a job somewhere like in pathology or somewhere in research or something. That would be my basic advice and to be true to yourself and lie to somebody else if you have to but don't tell yourself a lie. If you are not going to be happy in doing what you are doing and feeling a sense of satisfaction from the results you get then you are in the wrong place.

As an aside, I hope I have answered that part of the question. I don't know if I had a son or a daughter who wanted to go into medicine right now or today, I would also advise them that if you are looking for millions right now, retiring at thirty-five as a millionaire, don't go into medicine. Don't go into medicine for that reason, find yourself another job whatever it may be, one that you are happy in and enjoy. Expect to live for the lives of the people that you serve and it is in that way when you die a pauper like I am you will die happy.

Marion Blackburn: That is a beautiful sentiment and it's one that a lot of doctors have and a lot of doctors don't have and I have seen it both ways.

Dr. Best: That's right and I have seen it both ways too.

Marion Blackburn: It definitely sounds like you have it and maybe it helps me to understand a little bit better all the work that you have done both as a physician and as a special mover.

Dr. Best: As a humanitarian I believe that everybody has a right although the person may not deserve it, but they still have a right for respect and for all of the help that is necessary to make that person have a satisfactory life experience. Now, let me ask you a question, in terms of this work that you are doing in putting together this history, how are you approaching it and maybe for example, you and I have touched a lot of bases here, you may find it necessary and please feel free if there is some little point somewhere that you want some more information on, feel free to call me. I am wondering how you are going to package this whole panorama of what has happened at the hospital on up from where it was back when this building was built on up through where we are now.

Marion Blackburn: That is partially why I asked you that last question. You're right, it is a tremendous task. I think probably, Dr. Best, what I am trying to do with the people is that I try to find out what they are the proudest of and a little bit about what has maybe motivated them and then I try to describe their contribution to the hospital and to health care and I have to leave a lot out but the main thing I try to touch is their contribution and a little of their philosophy and a little bit about maybe why they would go to so much trouble.

Dr. Best: Now, in the time that you would find it necessary as I talked to Ms. Moskop about this, at any point that you may find it necessary, you may say that this was used by permission. I don't want to get into because I think Ruth may have told you, but if I live just a few more years, if I die, it is so called "goodbye world" but it will never happen but if we do get to publish what we are calling now recollections and reflections of the Andy Best story, there will be some copyright things so anything you want to say you can say that it was used by permission and you won't ever get in violation of those copyright folks and I certainly wouldn't want that but I want you to feel free to use this knowing the immensity of the job that you have got to do to package this whole fifty years of experience of the development of the service that this hospital has done, it is tremendous and some things you might leave out. I am just thinking now that I am talking there is something that I haven't mentioned and it is most important and I hope you can get it in.

This hospital as a community service hospital locally and maybe more than serving Pitt County developed by a giant step when it moved with the Affiliation Agreement to be the hospital for the ECU School of Medicine. That was a giant step and this Affiliation Agreement that they hammered out which dealt with the responsibilities of the various parts of the staff and all of the administration that took care of the private physicians as well as the medical school physicians. That was a giant step and could have been a very complicated type of issue which may have destroyed the beautiful relationship that we have and nobody knows that better than I because I was a part in the developing of that Affiliation Agreement. Let me say that the bringing here, the creation of the ECU School of Medicine was perhaps the greatest thing that has happened to East Carolina in the last hundred years and maybe it will include the next hundred years.

Marion Blackburn: Do you mean the University or the whole area?

Dr. Best: No, the medical school and its impact, the fact that we have got the medical school. This Affiliation Agreement, where the hospital was already here and instead of trying to use some of the resources and funds to build a separate hospital, that would have been foolish, plain foolish. When you look at the whole thing with the medical school itself as a magnet and, of course, if the hospital as it stands is a part of that medical school which helps it to be is a story within a story. It is all a story within itself. To me that eastern North Carolina and especially Greenville has been favored with a great, great lesson and I would capitalize the word lesson and put a couple of explanation marks behind it, there are a number of contributors, that is individuals, as well as factors which permitted all of these things to come together and if you would see that, that would focus on the leadership and the persistence and the bulldog nature of one Leo Jenkins. Leo had a lot of people helping him including Ed Monroe, Andrew Best and all the doctors around-Ferguson from Plymouth and all, but he was the person who wouldn't quit the concept of having a medical school. No matter what, he wouldn't quit. We lost the fight to the Board of Governors when we asked the Board of Governors to approve it and they wouldn't do it. The Board of Governors was split on the subject and we had a whole group of distinguished medical educators in the State who studied the question for about six months and had a report that was very thick. This was a blue ribbon commission to the Board of Governors and their conclusion was that North Carolina did not need another degree granting medical school. The vote to adopt that report was eighteen for and fourteen against. Well, I am told that Dr. Jenkins used the closeness of that vote in part, but that's not the whole story, but in part in his argument to entice or to persuade Senator Ralph Scott who was the uncle of Governor Bob Scott to introduce the Legislation in the Senate and Ramsey, who was Speaker of the House, introduced Legislation in the House to create the school of medicine.

When we got the Legislation entered into the General Assembly and got the Bills presented, as all Legislation is when you put introduce Legislation they send it to a Reference Committee. If that committee does not report that Legislation out of committee, there are five members and you have to have three votes at least to report the Legislation out of committee so it can be debated on the floor. When this East Carolina Medical School Legislation went to the Reference Committee of five people, the two guys in the Western part of the State said no, do not report it out and we will kill it right here and now. The two guys from the Eastern section said that they wanted it and we needed it and we are going to vote for it, so the Reference Committee was split down the middle. Do you know who that fifth person was?

Marion Blackburn: I am dying to know.

Dr. Best: That fifth person was one Henry Frye, who is now the Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court. The same Henry Frye was then a member of the House in the General Assembly and he was on that Reference Committee. After much lambasting and lobbying and courting by that split of two on each side - the Western boys told Henry Frye that he ought to vote with them in that he was from the West, he was from Greensboro and your constituents don't want that medical school. But Henry rose above all of that lobbying and voted for the Legislation to come out of committee where it could be debated on the floor. Without that one vote of Henry Frye the ECU Medical School would not have been existence, it would be lost forever more.

Marion Blackburn: I know I have to go back to something you said earlier which is part of the mission of the ECU School of Medicine is to train minority physicians.

Dr. Best: That's the contribution that Henry Frye put into the Legislation. Henry Frye was the culprit because when the Western boys first got down to the nitty gritty they told Henry who was from Greensboro and the boys said the statesman like thing was to come and vote for them and he told them he had some concerns. The Eastern boys asked him what were his concerns, whatever you want in that Legislation write it and they would put it in. Somewhere in my records right now I have a copy of the notes that Henry scribbled on some piece of paper or program or something, a statement that his concern was the recruitment and retention of minorities. Somehow or another, see at that time the ERA had its campaign going on. You know, the ERA almost got passed but didn't quite make it. But anyhow, the people out on the streets said this medical school was for minorities and women, actually the women were not a part of Henry's notes but he knew if we got the medical school here, then, of course, I had never talked with him and asked where he stood on the ERA but down in the hinterland, out here in the country, they got tangled up there with some ERA but that was not the fact. The fact was that Henry voted because and he changed it and got into the Legislation the recruitment and minorities.

Marion Blackburn: It is amazing how it comes full circle.

Dr. Best: Full circle of minorities. The ECU Medical School has been a star magnet. Even in your time, look at the development, the housing developments in all of these different areas, the courts and the Quail Ridges and even now you see housing developments going up everywhere like crazy and I don't see where in the world we expect we are going to get enough people here to fill it up but every time you look around they are filled up.

Marion Blackburn: And traffic, you can see it when you look at traffic. I have been in Greenville on and off for eight years now and you can actually have a traffic jam now on 33 and Firetower and all those places.

Dr. Best: That is exactly right.

Marion Blackburn: Dr. Best, did you ever marry?

Dr. Best: No, I am still single.

Marion Blackburn: You are still available?

Dr. Best: Still available, never had a wife. Some of my friends told me that I never had time and the other reason was before my mother died someone said I was not going to marry as long as his mother lives because he is really devoted to his mother. I told them I had to be devoted to my mom because my mom was devoted to me. I make a big joke out it.

Marion Blackburn: I can see that you might not have had much time, as you were very busy. As you said earlier, we have touched on so many things and you are truly a panorama and I could probably come here every afternoon for the next two months and talk to you and ask you more and more questions and I am just grateful for the time that we have had.

Dr. Best: I am glad to do it.

Marion Blackburn: Do you have anything I haven't asked you about you want to add, even in the future if you want to, call me up and tell me.

Dr. Best: In the context of what you are trying to do I think that we have covered the bases pretty well and somewhere along the line I hope that you can help me if you can make a statement and, of course, I take pride in something I have given you. I am concerned about the history. Did you read the history that Mr. Williams put out here in the fall of 1998? I haven't read it all but the parts that I have read-it disappoints me, it seems to me, now as I say I am going from the impression of the first half of it that I have read, it seemed to me that he took maybe the minutes of the Board of Governors and he extracted and extrapolated a lot of factors from that information to report the concept of a medical degree granting school - The Old North State National Society - was for a long time was only Johnny come lately North Carolina Academy of Physicians joined us in supporting the concept. The North Carolina Medical Society, Duke, Chapel Hill, and Bowman Gray, all of those great areas of health promoters were against the idea. Out of a thirty-two member Board, there were seven of us minorities. I was the only physician and was on this subcommittee for medical education.

Marion Blackburn: You were on the Board of Governors?

Dr. Best: Yes, I spent a year on the Board of Governors. Of course, Ed Monroe and I were the two who were called the promoters of the medical school. We were Dr. Jenkins' shall I say spare hands. I was on the Board of Governors and I was on this subcommittee headed by the Honorable Bob Jordan who ran for Governor but he missed it.

Marion Blackburn: Can you tell me what year you were on the Board of Governors?

Dr. Best: Yes, that was 1971 and 1972.

Marion Blackburn: That was a very important time.

Dr. Best: Yes, it was a very important time and you see now this is where I am emphasizing the minority contribution when the Board of Governors question came up. I was a member of the Medical Education Subcommittee, all six of my brothers stood with me so that was seven. There were seven of the other white members of the Board that voted with us and we voted against the adoption of that Resolution so that made it fourteen. That made it eighteen votes for the adoption, which carried, and fourteen against. I am told this and never talked it over with Dr. Jenkins but I am told that it was this closeness, just a difference of four people, that gave Dr. Jenkins some persuasive language to the guys that he wanted to introduce legislation to create the school. That is the only way we could bypass the Board of Governors.

Marion Blackburn: That is a very important point and I read Wayne's book and I don't remember about that.

Dr. Best: You see now, the minority influence didn't quit there because it so happened when it went to the General Assembly it took everybody and his brother, the whole minority group in the General Assembly voted for this thing. I spent three days in Raleigh myself lobbying among my brothers and sisters and there were minority people that I didn't know but I knew somebody who knew somebody else that I didn't know. So the lobbying was intense. Okay we got it passed but now we got it introduced and it would go to the Reference Committee and who was standing there waiting to boot it out of committee, Henry Frye, and he is just about as black as I am. When you look at it from that angle the minorities stood fast for the creation of this school and somewhere, somebody ought to wake up and say so to the public. They just take it for granted. Mr. Friday himself who was the President he was doing everything in the books and not in the books for it to be defeated. After that, Dr. Friday did a flip flop, an eighty degree turn, to get on the bandwagon to make this school a very valuable one and to make it what we know now as being world-class. We are a world-class institution. Dr. Chitwood just did the operation the other week and he was the only one in the world to do it, okay? There have been other things that we have done at this medical school, which are world-class.

Marion Blackburn: Like the Greenville gastric bypass? That's Dr. Pories, I think.

Dr. Best: Yes, Dr. Pories, Walter Pories, who is still a very good friend of mine. But my whole point is many of these things are made possible, these blessings have become available because of the minority contribution to the school. You can go back and put together this and somewhere as a member of that subcommittee Williams may have mentioned my name but my name being in that book doesn't carry anything about the hours and the persuasion that I went through to try to help this thing to be. All I am asking for the historians to say is that there was a significant minority contribution towards the creation of the School of Medicine at ECU.

Marion Blackburn: I am going to write that down that there was a significant minority contribution to the creation of the School of Medicine at ECU.

Dr. Best: If the historians say no more than that it will have credit by me to know that there is somebody that knows that we have gotten due credit for a whole lot of hard work that we did because without us it would not have been, I am telling you.

Marion Blackburn: Well, I am going to do my best for that very sentence in the piece I write even though it is about the hospital I will still do my best to try to put in some of these matters that maybe have not been brought to attention before. I fully plan, Dr. Best, to make sure that the piece that I write about you is one of the longer pieces and I will do my best to make sure it is very prominent.

Dr. Best: As a suggestion to you in describing the hospital starting from a community hospital as it was when it was built, built with Hill Burton funds and an open staff and all that kind of stuff to the next step which was the Affiliation Agreement that was made to accommodate the presence of the medical school. Where are we right now? The hospital staff and the medical school are world-class institutions. As well as Dr. Pories contribution, there was a cardiologist that did something that was world class and Dr. Chitwood's accomplishment, which has been talked about for more than a year. All of these things as we look now, the hospital, as a tertiary hospital is world-class and there is documentation to substantiate that fact that this hospital is world-class. You can talk about Duke, you can talk about Chapel Hill, you can talk about Bowman Gray, you can talk about the Mayo Clinic, you can talk about John Hopkins, and you can talk about this hospital which is world-class in what its mission is and what it has accomplished. Its accomplishments deserve world-class mention anyway you want to phrase that.

How did it get here? Through the effort of the minority contributions and you cannot escape it.

Marion Blackburn: That, I would say, is one of the many stories that can be told.

Dr. Best: Yes, and that is one of the underlying reasons why that the record of contributions of the reflections and recollections of the story. There should be a chapter in there that is going to deal with the details and specifics of what I have just related to you and we cannot escape it. I am happy to say that Justice Frye is a very good friend of mine.

Marion Blackburn: I have never paid attention to the State Supreme Justices before but I will now.