My father completed dental school in the 1920s. My parents
married in 1929, the year the Great Depression began. The 1930s were difficult
years to build a dental practice. In addition to the Depression, there was
antisemitism and an oversupply of dentists in the neighborhood where his
practice was located. Then World War II began. My father was by then past the
draft age. He heard that there was a need for dentists in the suburbs. He
started an office at the almost southernmost point in Chicago about half a
block from the corner where Chicago and 2 suburbs, Riverdale and Dolton came
together. The Riverdale-Dolton community was a steel mill community. The
inhabitants at that time were mainly steel mill workers and people who serviced
steel mill workers. The inhabitants were also White. After the war a suburb
called Altgeld Gardens was developed nearby. Most of the inhabitants of Altgeld
Gardens were Black. There was a significant anti-Black sentiment in
Riverdale-Dolton. The Whites there feared the Blacks would move into their
community. Because of the anti-Black sentiment, my father would lose most of
his patients if he took Black patients. On rare occasions when a Black patient
came to his office with an emergency (like a bad toothache), he would tell the
patient to come to the back door at night and he would usher them in with no
one looking. My father had to risk losing a profitable practice in order to do
the right thing. If the law would have forced professionals to provide service
to all Americans without prejudice, he would not have had to risk his income
including the ability to send my brother and me through medical school to
provide the ethical service for which he worked so hard.
No comments:
Post a Comment