Edith Mae Irby Jones

1927—

Medical doctor

Almost a decade before the civil rights movement began gathering strength, a dedicated young African-American woman from Arkansas challenged the system of segregated education in the southern United States. Edith Irby Jones made headlines in newspapers across the nation in 1952, when she became the first black woman to graduate from a white medical college in the South. In the face of such obstacles as poverty, prejudice, and institutional racism, Jones had achieved her goal of becoming a doctor, driven by a determination to increase access to medical care for the poor and people of color. By quietly refusing to accept the limits put on her life by a segregated society, she not only built a successful medical career but also used the fruits of her success to establish clinics in areas crushed by poverty and set up a scholarship fund to help other young people enter the field of medicine.

Edith Mae Irby was born on December 23, 1927, in Conway, Arkansas, the daughter of Robert Irby and Mattie Buice Irby. Her mother worked as a cook and housecleaner, and her father was a sharecropper, a kind of tenant farmer common among former slaves and their descendants in the post-Civil War South. Sharecroppers were allowed to live on and farm land they did not own in exchange for a share of the crops they produced. It was typically an insecure and unbalanced situation for the sharecroppers, as the landowners kept most of the profit and shared little with those who actually worked the farms.

Determined to Become a Doctor

Jones's childhood was marked by sadness and loss. She survived a severe illness at the age of five to lose her older sister a year later to typhoid fever. Even at the age of six, Jones noticed that in the homes of her neighbors who could afford medical care, those who had the fever often survived. She began to believe that her twelve-year-old sister had died because her own family could only pay for one visit from the doctor. She decided then that she would become a children's doctor and treat everyone who needed her, regardless of race or ability to pay. Several other members of Jones's family died of typhoid during her childhood, strengthening her resolve to be a doctor.

Robert Irby accompanied his family to church and taught his children about the importance of contributing to their community. Though his lessons would remain important to her throughout her life, Jones lost her father, too, at an early age. She was only eight years old when he was killed in a riding accident. Mattie Irby moved her family to the resort city of Hot Springs, Arkansas, where she found work as a cook.

Jones began attending segregated black public schools in Hot Springs at the age of ten. Before that, she had been educated at home, where she became an avid reader, finishing the encyclopedia and the works of William Shakespeare, John Milton, and Robert Louis Stevenson. She loved Stevenson's writing so much that, when she was allowed choose names for her two baby brothers, she named them Robert and Louis. She loved school, and, besides excelling in her regular classes, she learned shorthand and became an expert typist, able to type 120 words per minute. By the time she was fourteen, she was able to contribute to the family's income with a secretarial business, offering transcription and typing services to the vacationers who came to Hot Springs for the healthful mineral baths.

When Jones graduated with honors from Langston High School in 1944, a supportive teacher helped her obtain a scholarship to Knoxville College, a historically black college in Tennessee. Still driven by her ambition to practice medicine, she mastered an unusually heavy course load to major in biology, chemistry, and physics. In 1948 she earned a bachelor's degree and graduated with high honors. She took the medical college admissions tests and placed among the top thirty applicants in the nation. She then took a historic step: applying for admission to the all-white University of Arkansas School of Medicine.

Broke Barriers of Race and Gender

Though the University of Arkansas School of Medicine had never had a black student, the board of admissions complied with a recent decision of the U.S. Supreme Court against segregated education. They accepted Edith Irby's application, and in the fall of 1948 she became the first African-American student to enter a southern university since the Reconstruction period following the Civil War. The university's decision made national news, and Jones found out about her acceptance when a reporter from Time magazine called to ask for her reaction.

When Jones was accepted for admission, tuition at the University of Arkansas was $500 per semester, an astronomical sum for a young woman from a poor family. However, her community was behind her, and, through the efforts of teachers and alumni of her former high school, friends, neighbors, and a Little Rock black newspaper called the Arkansas State Press, money was raised to pay her academic fees and living expenses. She arrived for her first day in medical school with her first semester's tuition money in nickels, dimes, and quarters, the way it had been collected from people who wanted to contribute, but had little to give. It was this support from her community that gave Jones the courage to face the difficult years ahead, as the only black and one of very few women studying medicine in Arkansas.

Though the university had accepted Jones as a student, its facilities were still segregated, and, as the only black student, she faced isolation in a separate dining room, bathroom, and study area. However, even in this atmosphere of prejudice, there were gestures of support. The mostly black custodial staff cheered Jones by placing flowers each day in her segregated dining area, and some white students befriended her and shared her separate restroom and study area. One white woman in Jones's class rode with her to school on the bus each day, standing with Jones so they could ride together and talk without violating the segregated seating policy. Jones's hard work and openness made her so popular with her classmates that, after graduation, she was named alumni contact person for her year. During her second year of medical school she met and married James B. Jones, a college professor who became one of her most devoted supporters.

At a Glance …

Born Edith Mae Irby on December 23, 1927, in Conway, AR; daughter of Robert and Mattie Buice Irby; married James Beauregard Jones, 1950; children: Gary, Myra, and Keith; seven grandchildren. Education: Knoxville College, BS in biology, chemistry, and physics, 1948; University of Arkansas School of Medicine, MD, 1952.

Career: University of Arkansas Hospital, intern, 1952-53; private medical practice, Hot Springs, Arkansas, 1953-59; Baylor College of Medicine Affiliated Hospitals, resident in internal medicine, 1959-62; private medical practice, Houston, Texas, 1962—; Universal Healthplan, Inc., medical director, 1997—; Jones, Coleman, and Whitfield, partner; Jones Properties, co-owner, chief executive officer.

Memberships: American Medical Women's Association; National Council of Negro Women; National Medical Association, president, 1985-86; Planned Parenthood, Physicians for Human Rights.

Awards: National Council of Negro Women, Houston Section, Distinguished Service Award, 1972; National Black College Alumni Hall of Fame, 1985; Delta Sigma Theta, Award for Outstanding Accomplishments, 1998; United Negro College Fund, Award for Contribution to the Health of Haiti, 2000; University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Campus, Silas Hunt Legacy Award, 2006.

Addresses: Home—3402 S. Parkwood Dr., Houston, TX 77021.

Jones graduated from the University of Arkansas School of Medicine in 1952, in the top half of her class. She worked at the university hospital for a year as a pediatric intern, fulfilling her childhood desire to become a children's doctor. Following her internship, she returned home to Hot Springs and set up a private practice. While working as a doctor in Hot Springs, Jones also became involved in the growing civil rights movement, working with such well-known leaders as Martin Luther King Jr. With three attorneys, she became part of a group of speakers known as the "Freedom Four," who traveled throughout the South, encouraging African Americans in their struggle for civil rights. During the late 1950s, increasing racial tension in Arkansas prompted the Jones family to move to Houston, Texas.

Opened Private Practice in Houston

After six years in her own medical practice, Jones developed a strong interest in internal medicine, the field of general adult medicine. Once again breaking barriers, she applied and was accepted for a residency to study internal medicine at the all-white Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, becoming that institution's first black resident. She was assigned to work at a segregated hospital, where she once again found herself a victim of isolation and discrimination. Finally frustrated, she transferred to the Freedman's Hospital, an African-American hospital established in 1863 in Washington, D.C., where she finished her residency.

After completing her training in internal medicine in 1962, Jones established a private practice in Houston's third ward, a largely black, low-income inner city area. True to her childhood vow, she devoted her career to those who could least afford medical care. While tending to her patients, she took an active part in many organizations, becoming, in 1975, the first woman to chair the National Medical Association's (NMA) Council on Scientific Assembly. The NMA was founded in 1895 as a support organization for African-American physicians. In 1985 Jones became the first woman president of the NMA, where she worked to make black doctors more visible and accessible in the larger society. Jones has also had a distinguished career as a staff doctor at several Houston hospitals, including St. Elizabeth's, where she served as chief of cardiology, and Riverside General Hospital, where she was both associate chief of medicine and chief of medical staff. She also worked as medical director for the health management organization Universal Healthplan of Texas.

Remembering her father's early lessons in giving back to her community, Jones has always shared her success. Along with the Edith Irby Jones Healthcare Center in Houston, which has many programs for underserved communities, Jones created the Edith Irby Jones Foundation to provide scholarships for those who, like her, dream of becoming a doctor, but cannot afford tuition to medical school. In 1986, as chief of a U.S. Task Force on Health, she visited the Caribbean island nation of Haiti to pinpoint causes and solutions for severe health problems there. As a result of that visit, she not only established a health clinic for impoverished patients but also arranged for the drilling of several wells to provide much-needed drinking water. She also set up and continues to support urgent care clinics in Veracruz, Mexico, and in the African nation of Uganda.

Not content merely to contribute in the field of health, Jones has also devoted her energy to the issue of affordable housing. With her husband, she started a real estate business to buy and renovate homes, then make them available to low-income families at very low rent. The Joneses have also been involved with Habitat for Humanity, a community-based program that builds affordable housing.

Jones's multifaceted career has won recognition and respect from many different organizations. Besides honors in the field of medicine, such as being named Internist of the Year in 1988 by the American Society of Internal Medicine and earning recognition for leadership support from the Association of Black Cardiologists in 1992, she has received numerous awards for community service. In 1979 the state of Arkansas proclaimed Edith Irby Jones Day, and in 2000 she received the first ever Volunteerism and Community Service Award from the Texas Academy of Internal Medicine. Jones remains in Houston and continues her active medical practice into her eighties.

Sources

Books

Brew, Lydia E., The Story of Edith Irby Jones, M.D., NRT, 1986.

Pierce, P. J., "Edith Irby Jones," in Texas Wisewomen Speak: Let Me Tell You What I've Learned, University of Texas Press, 2002, pp. 136-139.

Periodicals

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, April 29, 2006; September 13, 2007.

Ebony, June 1986, pp. 90-96; July 2000, p. 35.

Jet, January 27, 1986.

Life, January 31, 1949.

Online

"Dr. Edith Irby Jones," National Library of Medicine,http://www.nlm.nih.gov/changingthefaceofmedicine/physicians/biography_175.html (accessed December 28, 2007).

"Edith Irby Jones," Notable Black American Women, Book 2, Gale Research, 1996. Reproduced in Biog-raphy Resource Center,http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC (accessed December 28, 2007).

"Edith Irby Jones, M.D.," National Library of Medicine,http://www.nlm.nih.gov/locallegends/Biographies/Jones_Edith.html (accessed December 28, 2007).

"Edith Mae Irby Jones," Notable Black American Scientists, Gale Research, 1998. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center,http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC (accessed December 28, 2007).

Park, Carolyne, "Fayetteville: Law, Medicine Pioneers Reflect on Early Struggles," NWANews.com,http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/201298/ (accessed December 28, 2007).

—Tina Gianoulis