Confronting Racial Injustice with Dialogue and Courage

Born amidst segregation and systemic barriers, my journey is a testament to the resilience and strength of the Black community in overcoming racial inequality, particularly in healthcare. My story begins in a racially segregated hospital in 1959 Raleigh, where my family faced relentless obstacles, even with the establishment of new facilities like Wake Med Hospital. I recount my grandmother’s fervent quest to find a hospital willing to treat her, highlighting the pervasive racial barriers of the time. This narrative seeks to shed light on the profound impact of race on personal and societal levels, urging us to move beyond these constructs and recognize our shared humanity.

Celebrate with me the inspiring efforts of my mother and her role in the Panel of American Women during the tumultuous 1960s. This courageous group, consisting of diverse women, fostered empathy and understanding through open dialogue about race and religion, especially during school desegregation. Through personal anecdotes, I illustrate the power of building relationships across differences and the importance of embracing our cultural histories. 

Let us challenge preconceived notions and misinformation, actively seeking knowledge to create a more empathetic and connected society. Join this crucial conversation as we strive for unity and equality, leaving no room for silence in the face of racial injustice.

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Carmen Wimberley Cauthen is an author, speaker, and lover of history, Black history in particular. As a truth teller, she delights in finding the hidden truths about the lives of people who made a difference - whether they were unknown icons or regular everyday people.

To Learn more of Carmen:
www.carmencauthen.com
www.researchandresource.com

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Unseen, unheard.
We've lived like that far toolong.
I'm Carmen Coffin and this isQuiet, no More.
Why does she talk so much aboutrace?

(00:22):
I know you wonder that it'sokay.
You can wonder.
I'm going to tell you.
Race has affected every part ofmy life.
It's affected from the placethat I was born and it'll

(00:44):
probably affect something aboutwhen I die.
I have to think about that.
When I said that just now, ithit me.
I was born at St Agnes Hospital.
When I was growing up inRaleigh, my friends would tell

(01:06):
me, my white friends would tellme, that they were born at Rex.
Almost all of them that I wentto school with told me they were
born at Rex Hospital.
Well, in 1959, when I was born,there was Rex Hospital and
there was St Agnes Hospital.
There wasn't a Wake Med WakeMed didn't open until 1961.

(01:27):
And Blacks typically did not goto a hospital unless it was St
Agnes and that was a smallhospital and at that point the
county was using that as thequote colored end quote hospital

(01:48):
.
It was started as a hospital,actually as a training center
for nurses, by the wife of therector of St Augustine's College
, which is now St Augustine'sUniversity.
It's important to know that byWorld War II it was not just a

(02:10):
training center for nurses, butit was also a facility to train
doctors, and while it wasn't amedical school, it was a place
where Black doctors could comeand do their residency.
Shaw University had LeonardMedical School and it's kind of

(02:38):
amazing that the same whitedoctors who were over Shaw's
medical school were also overthe training of the nurses at St
Agnes of the nurses at St Agnes, and Dr Herbert Royster was
also the head of the medicalschool at UNC in Chapel Hill.
He was a busy man, but theimportance of there being

(02:59):
hospitals in the city that wouldserve the Black population is.
You just can't talk about theimportance of it enough, because
there were people in ruralcommunities who didn't have any
hospitals, and they certainlydidn't have Black hospitals A

(03:28):
few, but not very many ruralcommunities.
When my father was born in 1930,his mother was in fetal
distress and his father drovehim, drove her, from Henderson
to Raleigh, and so he was bornat St Agnes Hospital.
Now why, do you ask, did hehave to drive her from Henderson

(03:48):
, 45 minutes away, to Raleigh?
Because that was the onlyhospital.
There was a hospital inHenderson but it only accepted
white patients.
So in order for her to be seenand for my father to be born
safely and my grandmother tocontinue to live safely, my

(04:11):
grandfather was fortunate enoughto have a car and he could
drive him.
So when I say that every aspectof my life, from being born on,
has been affected by race,that's the kind of thing I'm
talking about.
So when Wake Med Hospitalopened in 1961, for the first

(04:38):
several months, white doctorsrefused to see patients there
that were of color.
White doctors refused to seepatients there that were of
color.
The infant section, the nursery, had black children born in it,

(05:00):
but white women would not comethere and bear their children.
That is an effect of race.
Growing up, going to school, Istarted out in a segregated
school system, and maybe you didtoo, but it made it seem as
though there was somethingdifferent about us.
We're not different, we justhave different color skin.

(05:23):
We all bleed the same.
It's red, although there weretimes when I was growing up when
I said my blood was purplebecause I wanted it to be
different.
But I know I've cut myself.
It's red.
We eat, we drink, we have allthe same bodily functions, we

(05:47):
have the same heart desires andthat doesn't have anything to do
with race, but yet, and stillsometimes with the heart desires
.
We have parents who don't wanttheir children to marry or to
date people who are outside oftheir race.
Why is that?

(06:10):
Why do people get called namesbecause of that?
That's sad.
If God created us all, then allthese divisions that we put on
ourselves don't need to be there, and so that's why I talk about

(06:34):
race.
It's because there aredivisions, there are things that
divide us, and, in the main,there are things that we created
to divide us, and we need to bebetter than that.
We need to be different thanthat.

(07:05):
If you are a Christian and youbelieve that God created us all,
didn't he create a beautifulrainbow?
And so why would you disparagesomething that's in the rainbow,
while race was constructed inAmerica to divide people, not

(07:35):
just to divide blacks and whites, but to divide people who were
considered different.
Race was constructed so that ifyou weren't white, anglo-saxon
and Protestant, you didn't fitin.
You were less than.

(07:56):
I don't know how many of youremember that during the 1960s
and the 1950s, when you considerthat John F Kennedy won the
presidency, that was an amazingthing because he was Catholic
and Catholics were not treatedas first-class citizens.

(08:17):
Catholics were not treated asfirst-class citizens.
One of the things that I wasreally proud of my mother for
and her name is CaliforniaWimberly, in case you don't know
, but I was really proud of thefact that she was part of a
group of women called the Panelof American Women, called the
Panel of American Women, andduring the 1960s, when

(08:40):
desegregation was beginning torear its head, especially here
in Raleigh, north Carolina,there was a group of women who
started an organization calledPanel of American Women, and the
group came out of a group ofwomen in Kansas because a white

(09:06):
lady was in her community and ablack family was moving into the
community and this was in thefifties and their house was
threatened, their family wasthreatened, and it was just
because this Black family wasmoving into a white community
and she didn't think it wasright and so she thought, well,

(09:29):
maybe if people just talk toeach other, there would be a way
to change minds, and so shestarted the panel of American
women there, and there are daystoday, there have been days in
the last 10 or 12 years, thatI've thought we need the panel
back again talk wherever theywere invited to come and talk

(10:02):
and they would talk about thingslike what their lives were like
, and there would be four tofive women on the panel.
There would be a WASP, white,anglo-saxon, protestant woman.
She would be the moderator.
There would be a Black woman, aJewish woman and a Catholic
woman and they would talk aboutwhat their lives were like and

(10:23):
what prejudices they had had todeal with.
And they would go wherever theywere asked, whether it was a
church or an organization, or inRaleigh, when the schools, the
students, were desegregated notthe teachers, but the students.
They spent several days atDaniels Middle School, which is

(10:44):
now Oberlin Middle School,talking to every English class,
because that one school had theworst trouble with the
desegregation of the school,with the desegregation of the
school, and they would answerquestions after they talked
about what their life was like,and sometimes they were greeted

(11:07):
and treated kindly, andsometimes they were treated not
so kindly, but they would getasked questions like do black
people's skin colors rub off?
Can you get diseases fromsitting beside people who are
not like you?

(11:27):
These were questions they werebeing asked by school children
who were in middle school,because these are things that
they were hearing at home.
It was fortunate for my brotherand myself because we were able
to be friends with some of thekids of the other parents who

(11:50):
were part of the panel, and whenthe panel, when the mothers
would meet, then the childrenwould meet as well and we would
spend time getting to know eachother and developing
relationships that lasted long,long, long after the panel
disbanded.
But we were able to dispel someof the notions and the rumors

(12:17):
that we heard because we wereable to meet people one-on-one
and develop relationships.
And you know, that's the onlyway to change or to dispel some
of these notions that we haveabout people who don't look like
us, who don't eat like us, whodon't dress like us.
It's to find someone that's notlike us and to build a

(12:43):
relationship with them.
It's only when we're workingheart to heart or speaking
one-to-one that we can askquestions about things that
we've heard from people who maynot know the truth, who are just
passing along a rumor.
And so race is important becauseit's what divides us, but race

(13:06):
is also important because in ourculture it's what makes who we
are, the culture that we arepart of, an important thing.
It's not to make it a bad thing.

(13:28):
It's to make it an importantpiece of who we are, and so the
legacies, the memories, thehistory, the things that I, as a
black child, heard from myparents, my grandparents, that I
only found out because theyshared with me, because when I
went to school, nobody taught methat in the white classrooms
and I left black classrooms whenI was in second grade.
So it's important to know allof these facts and to know all

(13:53):
these truths and to not beafraid to ask questions or to do
research for yourself to findout what's actually fact and
what's actually something thatsomebody was afraid and made up.
I want to encourage you over thenext couple of months, as we

(14:17):
continue to talk about memoryand history and legacy, that you
stop being quiet about what youdon't know, that you stop being
quiet and not buildrelationships with people who
are different from you, that yougrow and that you gain new

(14:40):
knowledge.
Because if you're going tofollow along with me, I'm not
going to be quiet about thisanymore.
You've been listening to Quietno More, where I share my
journey.
So you can be quiet.
Let's connect atwwwCarmencoffincom.