How Would My Life Be Different If I Were Born in the South?

Education, Healthcare, and Self-Preservation Would Have Had New Meanings

Little Rock Nine Protest By John T. Bledsoe — This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs divisionunder the digital ID ppmsca.03090.This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=887311

I was born in Minneapolis, MN in 1956. My life was affected by racism in ways I never knew until I started researching. The doctor who delivered me was a Black doctor, Dr. William Donald Brown, Sr. His father, Dr. Robert S. Brown, was the first Black doctor licensed to practice medicine in Minnesota.

William Brown was a Minneapolis Central High School graduate, about six blocks from where I spent my high school years. It was the segregated school in South Minneapolis; there was another in North Minneapolis. Dr. Brown earned his B.A. from the University of Minnesota and his Doctor of Medicine at the Univ…