Change in the 1960s began breaking up old ways, turning bus rides into freedom rides and churning through the Old South like a tempest.

     While eliminating segregation led to violence, anger and bitterness in many places, it generated a quieter revolution in Greenville. One of the people who helped guide the community and the hospital - toward racial equality is physician Andrew Best. He remembers the early 1960s as a time of re-creating institutions.  

     "In the atmosphere under which we were working segregation you ran into so many different attitudes," he recalls. "Some people had a flexible and receptive attitude, and for other people, we had to figure a way to get around, to get inside when the door was locked. I had the job of designing, or fixing, a way to get inside with the least possible damage."

With his combination of passion and patience, Best became a key figure in several major transformations, inspiring his colleagues to integrate the hospital's patient floors, cafeteria and waiting areas. Ultimately, he selected the first African-American student to attend ECU, ending segregation there without a court order.

Originally from Kinston, Best served in the U.S. Army until the early 1950s, when he decided to return home. Lenoir Memorial Hospital was segregated, but Pitt Memorial - built with Hill-Burton federal funds - had an open staff.

"Staff privileges still left some things to be desired," says this family doctor, the only African-American at the hospital for more than fifteen years. "First of all, the hospital was segregated. All of one floor on the east wing, the first floor, was known as the colored floor. Everything that was admitted to the first floor was based on color alone. I delivered babies in the delivery room that couldn't even be admitted to the newborn nursery." He opened his office in January 1954.

All that ended when Best, and a respected white pediatrician, Dr. Malene Irons, joined forces. What happened next has been retold over the years: She could not accept excluding premature infants from the care units, known as isolettes, because of the infants' race.

Drs. Best and Irons went to the medical staff, with Best acting as spokesperson. "I pointed out that changes were on the way, and they were going to be as inevitable as the night follows the day," he says. "I had a deep feeling, knowing that tension had built up by seeing doors closed in the face.

      There were whole waves of unrest, which were 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 and make some accommodations voluntarily, or wait for some outside force to come in to effect these changes - and be forced to change under the auspices of violent protests."

And change came. First, the premature babies, regardless of race, went into isolettes. Next, so-called courtesy titles, such as "Little Miss Victoria Jones" for white children, were dropped. Then, the "colored" and "white" signs - "a bunch of foolishness," Best calls them - disappeared from the cafeteria.

Many times, he had to help bump progress along. For instance, he noticed African-Americans continued eating separately, in the old "colored" section, long after it ceased to matter.

"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, there was an orderly who was very close to me named William, and I said 'Are you going over to the integrated dining room?' and he said, 'No.' But Bill and I went to dinner, and got our trays and went over and plopped down in the middle of what had been the white area, sat down, ate our dinner and put our trays back."

Instead of worrying about stirring up conflict, he enjoyed the meal. "I was feeling the vibrations of accomplishment," he says. "Part of what I had to do was show minorities that nothing will come of it if you sit over in the white side. We got it accomplished and we got the changes."

He continued playing a large role in local events through the 1960s and 1970s, serving as a charter member of the Pitt County Interracial Committee, Good Neighbor Council and Human Relations Council. Eventually, he held state posts, as a member of the UNC Board of Governors and chairman of the eastern division of Gov. Dan Moore's Human Relations Council.

While a tempest raged outside his office, once inside, he focused on people and their health. He believes that double responsibility, of fighting for good medicine and against racial prejudice, gave him an unbroken sense of meaning. He likes to describe his life's work as "giving service for the sake of service."

Many of his former patients will attest to that. They recall the significant amount of charity care he delivered in Pitt County, since many of his patients could not afford to pay for healthcare.

In the end, he believes, the minority contribution to the medical center's success must not be underestimated. Whether because of his minority colleagues on the Board of Governors, in the state Legislature or through the various formal and informal networks across the state, minorities made a tremendous impact on healthcare development. Specifically, minorities made a significant contribution to capturing a school of medicine for ECU.

If the historians say no more than that, it will mean a great deal, he says. "We will have gotten due credit for a whole lot of hard work," he says. "Because without us, it would not have been."

Andrew Best