Dr. Charles Harris

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  Brian Wood: All right, it is September 13th, 2022. This is Brian Wood here with Dr. Charles Harris for an interview for the UNC School of Medicine Black Alumni Oral History Project. I’ll let Dr. Harris say hello to start up.

  Dr. Harris: Hello. My name is Charles Harris, and I’m excited to share my thoughts.

  Brian Wood: All right. Well, Dr. Harris, we’d like to start with a little bit of your background. Would you mind talking about your place and date and birth year and what your family was like growing up?

  Dr. Harris: I was born May 23rd, 1953. At the time, my father was in the Air Force. I was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Our family though is from North Carolina. And shortly after my birth, my mother got a teaching job in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and she moved there to take that until my father finished his debt in the Air Force and then he joined us in Elizabeth City.

  Brian Wood: What was your family like growing up?

  Dr. Harris: I am an only child. My parents were both educators in the public school system. My mother was a history, civics, sociology, US history, civics, sociology teacher and my father was a sixth-grade teacher, who ultimately ended up finishing his career as an assistant principal at a junior high school. They both pursued masters in education. Well, frankly, they wanted to be better able to serve their students but also to make more money because teachers just didn’t get paid that much.

  But we came from a long, long line of college graduates. I was fourth generation. And I can digress just a second but it really goes back to Sunnyside plantation in Littleton, North Carolina. My great-great-grandfather was the son of the plantation owner with a slave woman. And he and his wife subsequently and slaves had eight children. They went to basically get educated in a one-room school system created by the Episcopal Church. Of those seven male children, three of them were offered further education and ended up going to what’s now St. “Aug” College.

  So, of those three, one, my great grandfather G.L.S Harris turned out to be an educator. One of his brothers Scotland Harris turned out to be a North Carolina State Senator, and the other one was an entrepreneur, and landowner. So, our family, steeped in education, we were successful largely because of education community involvement and political activism. That gets down to my grandparents. My grandmother on my mother’s side was a 50-year-plus educator in public schools. My other set of grandparents, one was an Episcopal minister, who was politically active. And that was a whole other long story. And then his wife was a school teacher. So, we grew up in the throngs of education, particularly public school education.

  Brian Wood: Gotcha. Gotcha. And with that background what interested you first in medicine? Did you encounter somebody in your community? Or did you have family members involved in that at all?

  Dr. Harris: Sure. I did. My education is sort of interesting. The story has it that I went to pre-K or kindergarten and lasted one day, got a spanking and my mother never sent me back. So, I started my education in segregated schools and public schools in Elizabeth City, and at the first-grade level. My parents had obviously had done a decent job because I got there I wasn’t behind in knowledge or anything. I guess, part of my success has to do too with the segregated schools, because in particular my years one through six, we had very powerful black matriarch teachers who 1.) Taught you to feel comfortable in your own skin as a black person, taught you that you could do anything you wanted to work hard at, and taught you that you were or could be just as good as anybody.

  And they were fairly strict, but they were very supportive and nurturing also. So, probably by the age of eight, as far back as I can really remember people asking me about what I wanted to do I would tell you I want to be a doctor. And I guess, and it’s funny, I would tell you that I want to either go to Duke or UNC. And both of which ultimately came true. But I think that my relationship with medicine was through my physicians. I had a pediatrician who was a white physician who was very caring as I perceived.

  I grew up across the street from a well-known black family medicine physician, J. E Jones, he had a office across the street and actually had a labor unit upstairs because at that time, obviously, you couldn’t have privileges at the hospital. So, I interacted with him. And then as I got older, I also had a family physician who was a white physician who had best described him as having a house that was united like the United Nations. He had three or four children of his own but adopted and had a total of 12 children, handicapped children, black children, Asian children.

  So, I was exposed to at least in medicine, some people who were nurturing and committed to taking care of everybody. In contrast, though, I’d go see my grandmother in the summertime, and the family doctor that she’d take me to there if I had a problem would not lay hands on a black child or on a black adult. And which surprised me because years later in practice, I met a patient from Littleton, which was where my grandmother and the plantation was, and she was telling me about her doctor. And I was asking her about him. And she said, “You know, the strangest thing, he just would never touch me.”

  So, it’s very interesting. But that’s sort of how I got my start. I don’t know certainly my folks all went to HBCUs. And our family was immensely intertwined with the Episcopal Church, and those outreach churches that were built basically for slaves. And so that’s how our education started. I’m not quite exactly sure how I got introduced to the knowledge of Duke and UNC. I guess it was really through my mother because I think that she wanted me to be exposed to all the possible opportunities that I could have. And although maybe we didn’t have much as children’s school teachers, but that was a lot compared to what a lot of other people had.

  So, I think that she just had envisioned that maybe I could do something different. So, I think it was just getting exposure early to physicians who I felt like cared about me.

  Brian Wood: Interesting. I know that a lot of people in the late 60s, early 70s, as the school started to desegregate a lot of the black schools were closed and white teachers became the more of the predominant number because a lot of black teachers were then fired. Did you have that experience with your education at all?

  Dr. Harris: Yes. Well, so one through six, I was in segregated schools. They began to integrate the schools the year I would have gone to seventh grade. So, we had some kind of freedom of choice, basically. And you could choose to continue on a track in segregated schools or you could choose to go to the white school. My parents and I decided basically to go to the white school. But I wonder about that. And I think that again, it was just they wanted me to have what they thought, at least at the time, was the best opportunity.

  But at the same time, I can remember one thing that sticks out to me is my mother taking me as a young child into this trailer on the black high school campus that was full of musty old football equipment, and these piles of books. And these were books that had been discarded from the white school. And so we’d sit there and sift through these torn, tattered, smelly books until you found the most reasonable representative ones to take for me to have. So, I think that those kinds of experiences made the difference, the stark difference stand out.

  And so I think when I went to the seventh grade, the one thing I noticed that I lost from being in a segregated school was that support because basically, most people didn’t really care. And a lot of the black teachers didn’t transfer over to that system. And those that did had a pretty rough, rough time. I living up in the south. Well, first of all, I was under the impression up to sixth grade that all white people were smart. So, that quickly evaporated once I got there and I pretty quickly felt like I could compete with everybody there.

  The other thing that really I had been sort of protected from, I knew existed, but that’s when I really came into contact with Klu Klux Klan because we had the junior Klansmen who weren’t the brightest sharpest knives in the drawer, but they would show you the cards, I believe so. But that I was used to, in a sense, because my father had got transferred to the white Elementary School. And the first time he disciplines some white kids, he got a call from the grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan who live two blocks from us mind you.

  But we were used to that too. But it was funny to me because the Grand Dragon Clan owns like most of these guys, were business owners in town, he owned a power tool bicycle shop. I’d go in there for my father in the day time. He said, “Hello, Charles. Hello, dear. What can I do for you?” And at night, he’s calling my house threatening. That came to a pretty much at the end my father basically threatened to kill him and so he never called anymore.

  So, I mean but that was sort of more of in-your-face kind of situation. And in high school, there weren’t a lot of black teachers. I think those that could nurture you tried. But it wasn’t the same environment that you got in a more supportive network. But that’s not unusual for black people either because we’re used to living in duality. I mean, we’re used to living in and competing in this white world, which was sometimes racist and oppressive. At the same time, you had your black world or your community, your church. So, surviving in duality is not something that was new.

  I became a member of the band in seventh grade, and we had a nationally recognized military-style band, and the band director was a very nurturing supportive person who, I mean, I had to compete for it but I ended up being a first chair trombone, which was a big deal. There were two of us that integrated into the band. So, and there were some supportive people that I think that fought for us but not a lot.

  Brian Wood: One thing I’ve also been interested to learn about is the differences in hospitals and their willingness to admit black patients. Did Elizabeth City have a hospital at that point?

  Dr. Harris: Yes, it did. Yeah.

  Brian Wood: Did they have different areas that black patients would still go to interact with them?

  Dr. Harris: Okay, absolutely no medical staff that was allowed privileges. I do remember, and my only interaction then with the hospital when my dad got hypertension, and ended up in the hospital for a few days. So, I mean, the white physicians did admit black patients. I had some abdominal pain and went to the ER to rule out appendicitis. And I mean, I got treated, and I don’t perceive, but I didn’t have any real contact at that time with the hospital system. And you guys, so most of my care was outside of the system.

  Brian Wood: Interesting

  Dr. Harris: Yeah.

  Brian Wood: Gotcha. And then as you’re finishing up high school, what options did you consider?

  Dr. Harris: Well, I knew that I wanted to go to medical school. We had a fairly large class, I mean, like 460 students, I think I was ranked 13th or something. I mean, I had an A average, but I only applied to two schools, and that was Duke and UNC. And which in retrospect, boy that was a hard chance. But I did get accepted to USC and did not get accepted to Duke. And so in 1971, I came to UNC.

  Brian Wood: Can you tell me about your college experience as an undergrad?

  Dr. Harris: Sure. Well, so okay, your black hair dumped out on a majority white campus. And I can recall my first meeting with my college advisor, who was shortly after I got here, and his name was Donald Jacob. He was a chemistry professor who was just a no-nonsense hardiness. And I didn’t realize I thought maybe that was directed at me, but it really wasn’t. Everybody who ever talked to acted like he was like that with everybody. He was dry, coarse, rough, gruff, and straight.

  But the take-home message I got from that was at the end of the talk, he said, “Well,” he looked at my transcript, and he said, “Well we sort of project you to this semester to have a 2.8. And so I was like you don’t really know what to say. But I did say, I said, “Well I didn’t come here with a 2.8 I want to go to medical school. So, I don’t anticipate that I’m gonna have a 2.8.” And then lo and behold, I had 3.9.

  So, but that again, how do you survive on a majority campus? 1.) My roommate was a senior, BS chemistry major, who was from my hometown, who his brother and one of his brothers was in my graduating class. So, he really had no problem being my roommate, as a senior, and I’m a freshman. And he, fortunately, had very, very strict study habits. So, basically, we would go to the library Sunday afternoon, every day to Thursday night. And you stop for dinner, or if you had any other activities you go to and you’re back in the library.

  Saturday, we’d go to football games or do whatever. Sunday, we’d recover from that, and Sunday afternoon, we’re back in the library. So, basically, I treated college like a job. I went to class and then that’s how it was. I didn’t try to study in the dorm. Matter of fact my colleagues gave me the nickname “House”, which was the undergrad libraries there. So they called me house because I basically lived in the library.

  But I was very committed to what I wanted to do. And as a chemistry major, they weren’t gonna give it to me. I had to compete. There were some things I mean, my high school didn’t have calculus, but I got A’s in every math course I took. So, I had to make up for some things, some shortcomings that my high school didn’t have, although it was the high school that combined three high schools. And so I got off to a very good start.

  College life was, we had a subculture, a supportive subculture on the campus. There were only 300 black students, including all undergrads and grad students. So, you didn’t know everybody but you knew sort of who everybody was. And you had a smaller subset of the folks who were your good friends and supportive people. But also, I mean, I was in the marching band, and the concert band, Pep band, when I found I could get into all the basketball games.

  I played intramural softball, basketball, skydiving club, so I was pretty active and had a tremendous amount of friends on both sides. But the nurturing part, again, was the black community that existed on campus.

  Brian Wood: Yeah, yeah. Did you have any mentors or anybody on campus, either older students or faculty

  Dr. Harris: My freshman roommate. My father was a member of Omega Psi Fi Fraternity. So, we created a charter line my sophomore year here. And as my roommate, Bill Muldrow, his father was also a fraternity member. And so some of the grad students who helped us to start this chapter were, I mean, one of them. Herb Davis was in the biology department, and he ended up being Director of Admissions here. Paul Woods was a grad student here. And so they were sort of the mentors.

  They introduced me, I met one of the deans, Dean Bolton at the time, he was a very nice man who I just met on a couple of occasions but he seemed to be very supportive the times that I had met him and said if I had any real problems to let him know, which I really didn’t have any problems. The environment on campus, particularly in the early years, I mean, the chemistry class was 300 people. And basically, they were just weeding out people.

  For me, I was a BA chemistry major. I don’t like chemistry. It just was I could do that, take three upper-level chemistry courses, get through those intact, then that left me to take the liberal arts courses because I had so many of the requirements for being pre-med were things that would fit that degree. So, I had actually the best of both worlds except I don’t like chemistry to this day, but it was a means to an end for me, and the quickest way to get there, and then it left me room to take stuff I was interested in.

  So, that was my theory anyway, and it worked out pretty well.

  Brian Wood: Sounds like it. In some of our review of the archives, we’ve run across some initiatives in the early ‘70s and mid-70s to try to have summer enrichment programs for potential pre-med students.

  Dr. Harris: Yes.

  Brian Wood: At the UNC campuses, did you hear about any of those at that time or participate in any?

  Dr. Harris: No, no, I didn’t. My first real experience with UNC anything from here it was I had come to the planetarium as a kid. But that was it until I got dumped off on campus. Once I got accepted to medical school, we were strongly advised to participate in the Medical Education Development Program which to be honest with you I was a little miffed about at the time, because I felt like, gee, what is this? It was my last summer, and I was like I’m not cheating. I’m already accepted to medical school, and they’re gonna make me do this. And I really just thought about not doing it. And then I decided, well, that probably wouldn’t be a good look. So, I decided to do it.

  And honestly, I’m glad I did. My wife, who wasn’t my wife then though, was in the first MED program, and I was in the second MED program. And I mean, I did well, it helped with acclamation to the process. But contrary to the thoughts of some of my white colleagues, who thought that it really gave you a leg up, yeah, it might for a week. But it doesn’t prepare you for the volume and repeatedly, at which you’re gonna get hit with medical school classes.

  And I can remember that. I mean, my first day in medical school, sitting in Berryhill, and everybody was gone, I was sitting there and I was going, “What hell have I gotten into now?” Everything I knew in college was going into the day, everything I knew from the MED program was probably gone in a week, so. But I think that looking back on it, now, we were guinea pigs. And I’m not sure that they thought that we could be successful. Matter of fact, of that program, I think some of the kids who came from some of the historical black colleges were not as well prepared and got ground up.

  And the thing I’ve noticed about diversity is it doesn’t do anybody any good if you take somebody that’s not capable of doing it. Now, there are plenty of kids at HBCUs, and, I mean, a smart kid is a smart kid, I don’t care where they are. But if you’re not prepared, it didn’t help you in the name of diversity to admit somebody who is gonna get ground up by the process. So, I since have come to realize that the program, the MED program, specifically, I think, is a useful program, particularly for kids who are trying to figure out whether they’ll fit into medical school or dental school and after the top 20 or so they get a place.

  And that’s the one thing that I do contribute annually to the MED endowment fund because I do think that I want that to succeed because it gives people who are disadvantaged an opportunity. And for me, life it’s like in Psych class, you might learn about the behavior change, it’s triggers, and thoughts. And your thoughts can include goals, it can include opportunity, then it’s actions and it’s consequences. And that’s what life sort of comes down to.

  And I think what we fight so much for is just the opportunity. And then when you’re talking about you get the opportunity, but then what’s that like, and that’s part of what we’re here to talk about today. So, I think the MED program, I still think it has significant purpose. Although, like I said, at first, I wasn’t too excited. I mean, my friends, I know some people went to Wake Forest, and they made them all do a premium year to prove that they were worthy of a spot.

  And you kind of get tired of it. I made it through UNC. And I mean, to be honest with you, I’m not a person that’s going to quit. And my mother had a saying root hog or die. So, we root we’re not dying. So, that’s how it was.

  Brian Wood: Did you think about going to any other medical schools or were you pretty set on UNC?

  Dr. Harris: I was pretty set on UNC. Again, I don’t know why I had tunnel vision. But I thought that, and what I found, what I thought really has turned out to be true as the education I received here, I never felt deficient in anything. I went to Duke for residency, and I felt that I was as knowledgeable if not a better doctor, I know I was a better doctor than the Duke kids. So, I never failed any test, any professional test, I never failed any board exams. So, I mean, the education I got I’m grateful for. I mean, it did have a price though.

  Brian Wood: That’s fair. Speaking of price, and in a different sense, one thing we’ve been asking people is how they financed their education. At that point, how did you finance yours?

  Dr. Harris: Okay. Even though my parents were school teachers and paid for college, medical school, I applied for a state loan. I don’t remember the name of it. But it was basically a loan that was forgiven if you went into academics or you went into an underserved area. And a medical school was only 400 plus dollars a semester. So, I ended up with a total debt of $16,000, room board books and everything, which is unheard of today. I mean, my son’s is like $340,000 but he had an MPH in there, too.

  But, so I got that that was $4,000 a year. And that’s basically how I paid for it. I considered going into the Air Force. My father, though, got wind of that. And he called me, and he said, “Do you like people telling you what to do?” And I said, “Well, to what degree?” And he said, “Well, tomorrow, you’re gonna go to x place and live and work and serve.” And I said, “No, not really.” And then I thought about it, and I just didn’t have that much debt. So, it worked out fine for me.

  Matter of fact, that debt was forgiven because when I left residency, I went into practice in Durham. And I took on a clinic at Lincoln Clinic. And so my debt got forgiven. It’s interesting, though, because my debt was paid back in four years, I stayed there for 15 years and even brought one of my partners along who didn’t have that debt and made him work there. And we created and ran a Teen Pregnancy Clinic, we ran OBGYN clinics. And we often did that at night after we’d already worked our full job.

  I’ve always felt a link to the community, and the history of Lincoln Hospital was very interesting to me. And so I think they got their money’s worth.

  Brian Wood: Sounds like. And then, while you’re at UNC, as a medical student, can you tell me about that time and how that may have been different than undergrad or what was unique about it.

  Dr. Harris: Sure. So, I pretty much knew it’s gonna be hard. And I guess a way to describe that is we’re all on the same bus, but not all on the same journey. And so it’s different for different people. I’m sure that the majority of students felt medical school was hard. I don’t know many people thought it was easy. But I think that so my first year for me, it was just a heads down, go to class, study, pass the tests. And I was at Berryhill, are you familiar with Berryhill?

  Brian Wood: Mm-hmm.

  Dr. Harris: So, there’s little ante-room before you get into the real lab area. And for some reason I got assigned out there. And my lab mate was one of the Lumbee Indians, Elwood Heartland. And so he and I became pretty good friends and but for me, the first year was just a grinded-out year and I did pretty well. Elwood decided during the first semester it weren’t for him and so he basically dropped out and took his loan money and bought a tract of land in Chapel Hill, developed it, and became into housing development and he was retired by age 55.

  I’d see him on the way to work buying breakfast at Whole food, he’s like, “Hey man, how are you doing?” He’s like, “Are you still working?”

  Brian Wood: That was a smatter one.

  Dr. Harris: He had a brother though, who had matriculated to medical school and was a cardiologist and well-known cardiologist went back to the Pembroke area. So, first year that was pretty much it for me. It was just nose down grind it out. Second year was more challenging, I think, in a lot of ways. That’s when you really began to feel you were kind of out there, particularly in the lab components to a lot of the things it wasn’t very nurturing. I mean, Dr. Hollingsworth in anatomy was Dr. Hollingsworth, he was great. He was a well-known anatomist. And he was very helpful, but he was very strict and so you were on your toes there.

  Some of the other folk, particularly in the lab, it wasn’t that they were hostile. It was benign neglect. I mean, it wasn’t like they wouldn’t encourage you to come up to seek help or ask a question, you just got ignored basically, except for the folks and of minority folks, the few that were in the 1 percent of the class got plenty of attention. And my wife pointed out to me that some of the girls got plenty of attention. But the rest of us were sort of just it was benign neglect.

  So, that was sort of shocking to me. I just sort of actually became quite depressed about it. And I mean, I never felt that I was gonna fail. I mean, I never had to repeat anything, didn’t get decelerated, because my theory was if I had some five people below me, I was gonna make the cut, so that worked too. And so it wasn’t that, I guess it was just no support. Now, how did I make it then? Well, my cubicle inside Berryhill, and there were four of us. Three of them I had gone to college with.

  One of them was my roommate and a fraternity brother. The other one turned out to be the best man in my wedding who grew up in Edenton, which is 30 miles from Elizabeth City. I didn’t know him in high school, but we were good friends in college. We played intramural sports together. The other guy was from HBCU Al Klutz. But so how we made it was I mean, like, for example, a good example would be I had trouble with renal physiology. I was trying to understand those concepts. I didn’t feel like I had anybody I could go to with that.

  And so Klutz ended up going into internal medicine, he knew that stuff, right, forward and backwards. So, I mean, we helped each other in that regard if we had something that we were deficient in, but it was the first time I really felt like you’re out here on an island you got to sink or swim and it’s not anybody. And there was just nobody you could go to.

  And I guess if I had gone to some of the professors maybe, but it just didn’t encourage that. I mean, just you didn’t feel any nurturing whatsoever. And maybe and I don’t know from a white student’s perspective, maybe it’s the same thing. But I just my general take home message and talking to people about it was a sense of benign neglect. But I got through the second year. I guess part of it, too, my college girlfriend who was in physical therapy school, she left midway and took a job. So, it was a lot of stuff going on.

  But the thing that saved me when I think about it wasn’t support, it was that I started playing intramural basketball. The dental school and a medical school always won the championship game. Charles Phaeton, my friend who I tell you, I grew up near, he would play freshman ball at UNC and had another Syracuse guard Scott Stapleton. So, we had some ringers and so we kicked the dental school’s ass. So, that got me and then we started playing Carrboro rec league basketball at night. And then we started fishing at University Lake.

  So, that’s what got me through second year. And I think I suffered some academically, but again, I wasn’t no punch out, I mean it wasn’t like that. It was just I wouldn’t have fun. To be honest with you, I didn’t have very much fun. Yeah. Third year. The medical school, although my class had 22 People of Color, most of us black folks. And then we had some Lumbee Indians. 11 of us finished on time, several got decelerated, I guess. But most people got through third year.

  But in medical school, I guess my wife’s class was the first class that they had a significant amount of people of color.

  Brian Wood: What year was that?

  Dr. Harris: I started in ’75 so she started in ‘74. Before that, if you look back at it they had the trickle one or two years since 1953, I think was maybe the first one. So, you had that and I was naive about that, too. I said, you know these folks are altruistic. Well, they weren’t about that. I’ve been since told it’s about money, and probably federal money that made them do that. I mean, that’s certainly that’s what made them desegregate hospitals. And so I mean, that was sort of my naiveté about that process. But that was a core of people if it had been one or two a year, I don’t know, it would have been even a worse ballgame than that.

  So, third year, though, was different because the hospital was overtly racist. There was not a black person in sight except sweeping the floor. There were no faculty. I mean, there was probably during my tenure there may be one guy in ophthalmology who was very well respected ended up being a tenured professor. And my third year there was a black gyn oncologist Leslie Walton who came, and that was just in my world. But there may have been something throughout there, but on rotations, as far as the residency programs were all white, virtually no women.

  And the hospital, it was like going into really a world where you had some patients who didn’t want to see black students, and you went from benign neglect to really feeling overt racism. My first rotation clinically was surgery, general surgery, Charles Fayton, my lab mate and I were on general surgery. We finished our first day. And we got summoned into one of the senior staff’s office, Dr. Buck Walter. And we sat down, a big desk like this. And we’re sitting there, he looks at me, he says, ‘How are you black boys feeling in a white man’s world?” And what the hell are you supposed to say?

  So, we didn’t say anything. We just sat there and he went on babbling. And so we just got up and left. But I mean, we got outside the door. And I can remember we looked at each other and went, “Damn, what was that about? What do you do?” And so, but that was the message that, “We don’t want you to here. You’re not going into general surgery. And so don’t even think about it. You’d be lucky to get out of here with your skin on.” Now the rest of the senior faculty and I can go through some names, they weren’t overtly hostile, but they were not supportive at all. I mean, they just basically ignored you.

  And so that was the same thing in orthopedics—any of the surgical specialties. Basically, you get the feeling that we’re tolerating you. The feds made us take you. We really don’t want you here. We’re not going to help you. But we’re not going to –-So, you had that level of stuff going on all the time, and the hospital it was way behind. See we got the blinders on because we saw some people like us in medical school, but then it wasn’t like that in the hospital.

  And so my deal there was get the hell out of here and take as many rotations as you can out of here. So, I took a couple of medicine rotations in Greensboro and took a, which I was exposed to, some black docs who were graduates of UNC. I did several rotations in Charlotte. And I did a AI I guess later in eastern North Carolina, in Aurora, which is between Newberg and Washington. And it was a small town. I ran then I was a runner, I ran six, seven miles a day. And so you ran you go by the mayor’s house and they wave.

  And so everything was hunky dory down there. It is a single white doc running this practice, who has a public health set up of 10,000 patients, the guy worked like a damn dog. I mean, he’d go home at night and there’d be people sitting on his front porch. But so things were going well there, good experience. And then comes time to go to County Medical Society meeting in New Bern. And so he gets a call from the chief of staff’s wife. And she goes, “they don’t come to this meeting.’ And he goes, “What? What are you talking about?” And she goes, “They don’t come to this meeting,” and so it dawned on him what she was talking about. He said, “Well, I’ll never go to another one either.”

  But you got along the way little nuggets like that, to let you know what the world was like. And you also got the general feeling that they didn’t want you to even consider anything that made money. And they just basically wanted you to get through, take care of minority patients so they wouldn’t have to, and that’d be it. So, then the big decision came. So, I mean, I thrived because I got away from here and I was able to work in smaller environments and was able to get some honors there and work hard and people sort of treated you okay.

  But then came the big decision. I had because of my pediatrician who we talked about, I wanted to be a pediatrician. So, I mean I have geared a lot of my work and when I got to pick rotations AIs and all and pediatrics because that’s what I wanted to do. So, and those people I have to say in the sub-specialties like peds cardiology, peds infectious disease, they were very welcoming. And so it wasn’t total. But the surgery world was totally different.

  So, I go to Charlotte and do peds and got honors there. I go to Charlotte to do OB-GYN. And there was another white student in my class who wanted to go into OB, I didn’t at the time. But I got in Charlotte, I did deliver 45 babies, I got to do some minor surgical things. We busted our cans. And by that time, I said, “Gee, I like this,” because I actually like surgery. And I liked the opportunity. But I like primary care. So, I said, “Well, I can do OB, and I can do all that.” Delivering babies was a hoot. Plus, I like the adrenaline rush of complicated stuff. So, I decided, well, maybe I should do OB. So, we worked our cans off and the chairman of the department there was a community guy who had not been there.

  And so we got honest recommendations from the residents and from the faculty that we worked with. And so this guy comes in, he met with both of us the same time we’re sitting there. He said, “Well, I understand you guys did an average job here.” And we were devastated. I mean, because we were like, “Well, did you even look at our recommendations and what people thought about the work we put in?” So, we decided hell we’re going to rebel.

  So, we said to him, you know that this is just not appropriate. And we ended up getting honors, but I was surprised he didn’t kick us to the curb. But that left me with a dilemma so what am I to do? So, once I declared that I wanted to go into OB, I got assigned to a OB faculty member to be my mentor, I guess, you want to call it. And the chair department was a Dr. Hendricks at that time, and he was on sabbatical saw I never saw him and wouldn’t know what he looked like.

  So, I go to my advisor, his name was Luther Talbert. I told Luther, well, we spoke and I said, “I decided I want to go to OBGYN.” And he looked at me, and he said, “What do you want to do that for?” And that’s all he said. So, I said, “Okay, fine.” So, I just left. So, the other thing was that, from the first day of medical school, there were two people in my class who had decided they were going to go into OB, and I won’t call her names, but they both had spots in the residency program basically from day one.

  And they did get spots in the residency program, but that was a known fact so I knew not to consider applying here. Plus, they only had one person of color, who was a resident from Alabama B. Ray Lowe male. B. Ray was very smart, but very southern and very brash. And they did not know how to handle B. Ray. They ain’t know what to do with B. Ray. But so I knew that that was not an option. I also knew that I wanted to stay in the southeast from Virginia down through Florida. On one of those pediatric rotations in Charlotte, I met my, who I didn’t know then was gonna be my wife. She was in class ahead of me.

  And so that made me sort of really want to stay in the area. But we didn’t know, they weren’t a couples match or anything. And then she was fortunate enough to get an anesthesia residency here and stay here and did a fellowship in pain management, which I’ve talked her into coming here. And you should talk to her because she has a female perspective and a black female perspective. She was treated with a lot more hostility than I even experienced because she was in that world I was telling you about, the hospital world, which was not good.

  So, I went to all my interviews, and I interviewed at Duke and I thought that went well. There were only six residents per class. But they had a black resident in each class the two classes ahead of me. And there was a black fellow, one black faculty member. So, I had some people to talk to, and I thought that went well. I went to University of Virginia, it was lily white. They were nice and cordial but you weren’t getting a spot there. I went to MUSC which was the same way. They were warm though I felt okay, but there was no people of color.

  So, I made the flaw of asking Dr. Hester if he had any black people in the department, he turned beet red leaned back in his chair, mumbled something about some guy from Barbados. And it went downhill quick. So, to the point I even started, it was funny. I mean, obviously “Dr. Hester do you know a good restaurant down here in Charleston I’m down there for the day?” So, that was that.

  So, I went to Miami. And I didn’t speak Spanish. And that was a whole different world. I went to Grady, I went to Emory. And Grady blew me away. I mean, I went into the hospital when there was the OB board had like 30 people with every kind of complication you could ever imagine on it. I said, “How many deliveries do you do?” And they said, “Well, we do 30 deliveries a night, we don’t worry, there are two of you are on call.” So, I figured there, I wouldn’t learn anything, I wouldn’t be experienced with everything. So, it came back down to well, what the hell am I gonna do?

  So, I knew I wasn’t gonna get any support from UNC, from Luther, and the crowd, and I didn’t know the chair so where am I gonna get a letter from? So, I decided to pack myself up and I went to Duke. I made an appointment with Robert Parker at Duke, who’s the chair, and I went over there. And we sat down, and I said, “Well, Dr. Parker, I interviewed here,” and he said, “Well, how they go?” I said, “Well, thought it went well.” And he said, “Are you a good student?” I said, “Yeah.” So, he asked me all about my family. I’m from eastern North Carolina. He was from eastern North Carolina, a little place called Pine Tops.

  And so basically, after a while, he said, “Well, would you be interested in coming to Duke?” I said, “Oh, sure. Yeah, great. I’d love that.” And I was thinking, well that’ll solve my problem because my wife is here. And I got married right at the end of my fourth year before I started residency. So, I left there, we shook hands, and I left. And so I had finished my coursework in December. So, in January, I got a job at Dorothea Dix, as the chief medical officer in one of the buildings, basically doing physical exams on the residents and making sure they got referrals and their meds.

  So, I got nervous and I said, well, why would Dr. Parker invest in me like that because nobody else has? And so I called him up. So, I went over there. And he said, “Harris what’s wrong?” And I said, “Well, Dr. Parker, I have to tell you, I just don’t know how this business works and I’m a little uneasy.” And he said, “What did I tell you?” And I said, “Well, you told me everything will be alright.” He said, “Well, good day.” So, I left. And lo and behold, match day comes and I match to Duke.

  Well, all hell broke loose over here, because they were just coming out of the bushes, “Oh, one of our boys matched at Duke.” Not with any of their help. So, it just was thrilling to me how it just fell in place for me. The Duke is a different culture. But one, I felt like I really valued my education here because I was able to compete, I never had any problem. It turned out to be a great specialty for me. But the difference was, and I’ll give you a good example.

  On my second rotation there, I was in the clinic with Dr. Parker, and he was a world-renowned pelvic surgeon. And there was a little old lady who was a benefactor to the department, he’d given hundreds of thousands of dollars to the department. And she was going to have Dr. Parker operate on her. So, he got surgical consent and said, “Well, Dr. Harris is going to do your physical exam.” So, she looked at me, and she said, “No, Dr. Harris is not going to do my physical exam.”

  He looked at her and said, “Well, unless you want to have your surgery 12 miles down the road at the other fine institution that we have, he will be doing your physical exam.”

  And I knew then that I was in the right place because that’s not what I had gotten here. And he was committed to having women in the residency program, having black folks in the residency program, and it was a great ride for me. So, but the institutions are different. And I think UNC did its job. It turns out great doctors. But at the time, you sort of were given the opportunity, but that was it. I didn’t realize how much of the opportunity I had to inherit.

  Now again, that’s my perspective, I’m sure that your perspective you had to work hard too. And I’m not saying you didn’t, but you don’t have that extra layer of elevated cortisol all the time in the background, but I will tell you back to the duality of life for us. And I think about what Dr. Buckwalter had said, “It is a white man’s,” it was a old white man’s world and we had to survive in it, and that’s what we’ve done.

  And it was helpful because I could go right now to Few Gardens, the projects, I know that’s a dangerous place but I wouldn’t feel uncomfortable. I put on a tug and I’d go to the White House and I wouldn’t feel uncomfortable Whereas I think that I asked some of my white colleagues sometimes, “Well, what would happen if you’d get dropped in Few Gardens they’d die, they would die. They wouldn’t know what to do. But we have been used to that. We also, I guess, back from what we’ve had to endure as a race are used to doing the best you can with what you got. But you were successful if you had a family structure. And my family structure were the other students and my real family.

  But failure in my family, it wasn’t that they put pressure on me, but I realized that I never thought that I wouldn’t be successful.

  Brian Wood: I gotcha. And it’s interesting to hear you talk about the different cultures at UNC and Duke. And I think at OBGYN, in particular, is one where I’ve heard stories about just patients refusing –

  Dr. Harris: Oh, absolutely.

  Brian Wood: Exams black providers pretty regularly. Did you ever have any provider stand up for you at UNC in a way that encouraged it? Or was that a new experience for you once you got there?

  Dr. Harris: Oh, it was a new experience. That was a new experience, because he made it clear that if you didn’t want that you weren’t gonna get service there. And Duke was kind of interesting, too, because they had what was called a private Diagnostic Clinic, which was the group of physicians, and they had some black physicians, but even the physicians, one of the now emeritus physicians who kept that after he retired, but he was very well known, but he didn’t even have an office in Duke Hospital.

  He had an office in New Brownstone which was a hotel down the road. And our chair, he had the first African American fellow at Duke. And he just for whatever reason, was committed to women’s health. And he knew that black women needed good care as all women did, but particularly, and we still do, I mean, those ratios haven’t changed.

  I mean, since they’ve started keeping stats of maternal mortality, and outcomes for all diseases it’s still two to three times worse in black patients, regardless of financial status. So, we still got a lot of work to do, but it was a different culture. I just didn’t experience that. They just didn’t tolerate it, because it came from the top down. I can remember going into the subsequent chair’s office one day to tell him I thought I was being discriminated against. And what it was, was I was I had call. The person making the call schedule had given me more call.

  And he was taken aback and just didn’t know what I was gonna say. And I just said, “Well I’m discriminated against because I got more calls.” He said, “Well that will change tomorrow and he equalized the call schedule, but that wasn’t really a personal thing. That was just an oversight. No, I feel supported. Here, yeah you just had to find your own way.

  Brian Wood: Was there a moment in residency in which you kind of felt like you came into your own as a medical professional?

  Dr. Harris: Oh, absolutely. Well, first of all, the whole environment was pretty brutal. I mean, we’re on every other night call for four years. And so you were either post call or in the hospital, probably you stayed in the hospital, totally, two or more years of the four, you were actually in there doing something. We had a lot of responsibilities. I mean, as second-year people, we gave all the chemotherapy, we had the Southeastern Trophoblastic Disease Center. So we had plenty of people.

  We had abortion services that were complicated. And so those of us who would participate in that had that to deal with. I think that you learned by volume and the support of the faculty to operate well. And I was fortunate enough to be fairly gifted at surgery. So, I adapted. But by third year, I mean, you could do an operation, and you had to have the attending either in there or immediately available but that’s a lot different.

  But our training and level of experience was a lot different. I mean, we trained in obstetric forceps, which have gone to the wayside in the C section rate has gone up. But lots of things. I mean, so we were more independent by third year than certain people. I mean, our residents now are on a much, much shorter leash than that. But we also had some rotations in Fayetteville, where you were really kind of on your own. And so, I mean, I can remember one of my rotations there in two months, I had done 90 major operations.

  And I was such that it was an environment that, I mean, if I wasn’t operating, I’d go and operate with whoever was operating, it’d be general service, urology, whatever. So, I learned a lot of bowel skills, urologic surgery skills, but that was kind of what you made it. We had another one of the residents in my class went and did three cases. But I was a hawk, I wanted to learn as much as I could. So, the other thing, though, that was important to me in training was elevating the respect that black patients and patients of color got because it was a stark difference.

  Duke as they desegregated the hospital, I mean, initially, they had black wards and white wards, but when I got there they weren’t that but they were basically segregated by economics. So, they had staff service, which were basically poor people, which meant they were mostly black or poor white. And they had the private service, which so that’s how it still continued, although the races were mixed, but it was I call it economic segregation.

  Brian Wood: So, did you pay more for the private service? Is that how they were able to enforce that?

  Dr. Harris: No, they didn’t. Well, they had insurance or the means to pay.

  Brian Wood: Got it.

  Dr. Harris: And so it was, I mean, but it was done in a way that wasn’t overt. I mean, the private patient, Dr. Parker’s patients got the rooms with the view. And it was a little different. The were some rooms that had two patients, and certainly, the lower income patients, which primarily were black patients were there. But the other thing that was important in a teaching institution is making sure that people aren’t just used as guinea pigs. And in the black community that still exists today. You go to Durham and you say, “Well, you need to go to Duke for this.” And “I’m not going to Duke,”they’ll experiment on you.”

  And to a large degree, I can understand why people felt that way. I mean, you got to Tuskegee incident and other things that point out how that happened. And so I felt like my job was to treat all patients with respect, but to make sure that minority patients got treated. And it’s little things like your chief resident going in the room, “Good morning Jane,” when Jane could be my mother. And so that I made sure we changed. We had a maternal-fetal medicine fellow who would just going in the room at 6:30 in the morning, snatch somebody’s cover off and start ultrasounding. Not good morning, not hey, how you doing? Can I do this? It’s like, no. So, he got taken to the woodshed.

  I mean, so there were just some obvious things. But the thing I can tell you is that as far as the level of service that folks got at Duke, there was no difference. I mean, we worked just as hard to keep the poorest person alive as we did the wealthiest person. And that was something that certainly I was able to carry over throughout my whole practice career in that I had patients who didn’t have a home. And I had patients who flew in to see me twice a year in a Learjet. So, I mean, we didn’t separate out, I didn’t even want to know anybody’s financial status. And so it was my job.

  When I left Duke, I got offered a faculty position there, but I didn’t want to stay because I was a generalist, and I didn’t want… back then if you were a nicheless person, in an academic medical center, you were a gopher, you get sent here to do that, do that, do that, do that. And so, if they had had minimal invasive surgery then or something like that I might have stayed in academics. And I wasn’t a bench research person, although I’m a clinical research person.

  So, I decided to go out into practice, which is another experience because first of all, you were limited in jobs. Well, my wife was an anesthesiologist so, I couldn’t go far. And we looked around for some jobs and but you got the white groups weren’t hiring in the black physicians. Black physicians, there was a faculty member at Duke who went into practice in Durham, that was a first fellow there and he really wasn’t interested in adding to the practice. And a lot of black physicians were solo practitioners and they were used to just working themselves.

  I met a fellow from Durham, Ira Smith, my father and his brother lived in Elizabeth City and they were in the same fraternity, the Omega Psi Fi and so I went to the fraternity function there and I met him. And he was asking me what I was doing. And I told him and he says, “Oh well my brother’s doing the same thing. He’s at University of Tennessee Knoxville.” So, it turned out I called him and we ended up talking him to coming back to Durham. And so we decided to start a practice which was a challenge because wasn’t about who would give us any money.

  Went to 13 banks, one guy is just looking at window plant with the blinds. So, we finally got a loan from the president of Planters Bank back then. His yard in Hope Valley abutted one of my professor’s yards at Duke, and he was in his rose garden and he said, “Well, you know Harris?” He said, “He’s asked for a loan,” and he said, “Well, should I give it to him?” The guy said, “Yeah, give it to him. He’s a good guy.” So, that’s how I got the loan.

  Brian Wood: That’s how you had to get the loan.

  Dr. Harris: So, that’s how we got started. That was fine. But we didn’t even get any money from the black bank because we went in there, and it was even a paternalistic, “Who’s Your Mama?” And I was an outsider to the Durham Black Blue blood society, and my partner was going the wrong side of the tracks. But that was helpful. And then that was another challenge, too, because the mentors in the black community wanted to basically control what you did and where you were. And so they wanted us to have a practice on Fayetteville Street down the road from Central. And we had a different vision.

  We said, why we want to practice over the hospital where everybody else is. And it’s interesting, because we decided that we wanted to elevate the level of care for black patients, obviously. But we also wanted to compete with the share of all patients, and provide equal or better care than any women had in an area. So, that was our goal. And obviously, there was a lot of pressure because you’re upsetting the economic applecart. And so that was a very controlled environment. For example, we looked for office space and went to central Medical Park, and they said, “No, can’t have it in here.”

  So, ultimately, we met up with a developer, who was new to the area, built us a first-class office. We didn’t have to get a loan, because he went to the bank, and the bank gave us money. So, in an office that was better than any office in the area, and that sent a notice. And we grew from two docs to seven docs, five mid-levels, three full-time offices. And at one time, we had offices in Chapel Hill Meadowmont, an office in Durham, an office in Hillsboro, and a part-time office in Roxboro, 44 employees.

  So, I became involved in medical staff leadership, I became chair department in Durham Regional, Chief of Staff there, we had 400 docs on staff. So, and ultimately, after 20 years of that, Duke wanted to expand into community. So, our practice joined and Durham Ob which was another one of the large white practices in the area joined to Duke. But our joining there, people say, “Well, they acquired you.” Well, it’s a little different, because we actually had an appointment by School of Medicine and had faculty appointments, and had admitting privileges at Duke Hospital, which nobody in private practice has had since.

  So, which was quite unusual, but we brought something to them that we wanted. Those two groups, they have now three, our group’s still there and the other group, and Duke has an internal generalist group. And those our two groups alone made more money than all the sub-specialists at Duke. I had always maintained a clinical association with Duke before becoming a faculty member. So, the last 20 years we were actually Duke faculty.

  So, as one of my white colleagues, the older guy told me when they pulled us aside, he said, “You know, you boys done good.” And we did. I mean, we changed and did a lot of things. We felt probably best about though, that we had a very diverse practice. We had someone in there who spoke Russian, French, Spanish, and Southern. And we maintained a very diverse staff, we maintained a very diverse practice. And it was actually a lot of people were surprised. First, they were surprised we could get white patients. But you know white people like everybody else once they realize you take good care of them, better care than they were getting, because they were so matter of fact in their practice.

  And we went out of our way and their studies have proved that. I mean there’s studies out there that I’ve seen a couple that said that black patients, for example, taken care of by black docs had better outcomes. White patients who are taken care by black docs have at least equal or better outcomes. So, because that, again, is somewhere we had to survive in duality, I had to make you feel comfortable coming to a black physician. And I had to also keep the level of care that we provided to our less fortunate black patients high.

  So, we had a good ride, I think, and accomplished a lot. And for that, for my education here I’m grateful. But it wasn’t without something.

  Brian Wood: What a remarkable path to get there. While you were in Durham, what kinds of things were you doing from a practice side as a generalist?

  Dr. Harris: Okay. A lot different than happens now. Our specialty sort of is being broken up. Matter of fact, it was always funny because I’ll give you a good example. Well, first of all, to answer your question, we did low-risk obstetrics, high-risk obstetrics. We did basic infertility workups. We did cancer diagnosis and early treatment, non-metastatic treatment. I mean, things that we could cure, like with a hysterectomy. We did some reproductive endocrinology. I mean, we certainly had some trans patients.

  I mean, we were one of the first practices that openly would accept surrogates. Yeah, because a lot of practices wouldn’t even accept a gay couple. So, we sort of had all the bases covered. Now, but that was because of how we were trained. Now at Duke, for example, you send all your gynecologist stuff to your gynecologist. If you getting a bladder or a C-section you call the oncology. Well we fixed that because we were trained to fix that.

  The obstetrics except for some extremely high risk that needed a neonatal intensive care nursery right off the bat I mean, we took care of. So, the other thing that we did as sort of pioneers in a sense that we came up with, I mean, laparoscopy was in its infancy when I started, and hysteroscopy certainly was in its infancy. And but as those techniques developed, I mean, through additional training, I became quite adept and most of our partners did advanced laparoscopic surgery and at all kinds of endoscopic surgery.

  So, we were able to stay current with that and offer patients. So, we had very little really to send to Duke except for something that we couldn’t. But being on faculty there, I could even take care of that because I could just admit them at either Duke regional where I delivered most of my babies, or I could admit them to the big Duke, and go there and take care of them. So, the other interesting thing was very early on in practice, UNC got the, well, we were probably 10 or 15 years into practice, but got the Kaiser Permanente contract then and we were the OBGYN group for Kaiser. So, they delivered here, so we had to get privileges here at UNC.

  And so we’d come over here and do deliveries too which was interesting, too, because I didn’t have an office here. And the OR, the black OR staff was so excited to see a black doctor. I mean, I‘d get my stuff and they’d find me somewhere to sit and wait, they’d bring me coffee. And it was that they were just delighted. And then the same thing, my wife can tell you a lot of stories, but which I won’t even take her thunder, but she got the same. She got a faculty job at Duke and she show up and they say that, “We’ll wait for the doctor.” And she says, “Well, I’m here.” Or they think she was the room turnover person.

  And so it’s a long journey. I think our practices, probably 60 percent minority patients and 40 percent White patients. So, we really did upset the economic cart in all the surrounding counties.

  Brian Wood: One thing that I guess is on a lot of people’s minds right now with women’s health care is access to abortion services.

  Dr. Harris: Yes.

  Brian Wood: Was that something that was part of your practice?

  Dr. Harris: Absolutely.

  Brian Wood: Did that come up in the community as anything that ever caused you any trouble or was that just kind of part of your practice?

  Dr. Harris: Well, it was part of our practice. I have felt, I mean, certainly, we have over the years, we got some partners that don’t do abortions. But that didn’t mean they wouldn’t counsel you about an abortion and either refer you internally. It’s kind of interesting. I think that we’re on a slippery slope that frightens me. Matter of fact, I used to joke about it and say that, I hope that I’m not practicing when Roe vs. Wade gets overturned because when I started my practice, abortion became illegal in North Carolina in 1968.

  And I started my residency practice in 1979. We still were seeing waves of complications from illegal abortions. And those are obviously poor people and black people. And we had basically a ward full. You could tell when the abortionist, the local abortionist came to town because about two weeks after that, you start getting these people who have septic shock, bleeding, just sick as crap. And so we ended up having almost a ward full of those kinds of patients every time the abortionist would come to town.

  So, taking care of that, matter of fact, before I left, we presented an M&M. There was a patient presented that had a legal abortion but that came in septic shock. And there were only 2 people in the room that knew what that was. And I was one of them because I had lived that experience. But we had patients, I wasn’t involved in this patient’s care, but of a girl coming to regional for coat hanger in her heart, we had hysterectomies on teenager, it was just unbelievable.

  So, the other thing that people don’t realize about reproductive rights is that the current long-acting contraceptives well, when the majority of birth control pills, long-acting contraceptives, implants IUDs don’t prevent conception, they prevent implantation in a lot of instances. So, where we are now it’s taking all those things away as the next step. And abortion is you don’t outlaw, I mean, you can outlaw abortion, but it doesn’t go away, it just becomes unsafe.

  And for people who have to travel, for people who don’t have money, it’s terrible. And I get both sides of that because as somebody who feels comfortable in all aspects of women’s health care, I had to have that thought with myself every time I performed a termination. I mean, no matter how I’m gonna have to atone for this with St. Peter at the pearly gates one day. And I’d still talk to my minister about these things, because I have these conflicts, particularly in OB-GYN. But I know that I’m so thankful that I went into women’s health because I felt like, one, I could get the things I needed, I could get obstetrics I love, the surgery I love, preventive health care I love, I could do all three.

  I mean, I liked variety, and I liked the high-risk things. Somebody came up to me in the grocery store the other day and said, “I was a nurse where who worked with you in the OR and I said, “Okay. Hi.” And she said, “But the thing I liked about you, no matter how bad it was, you always called me and you knew what to do.” But that’s what I thrived on, I lived for, I was trained for. And that was the kind of stuff that it was exciting to me. But the thing if I could take one teenager and prevent them from getting pregnant, or having to deal with an abortion, or have a C section that led them to three more C sections. I felt rewarded.

  At that Teen Pregnancy Clinic, we had, the youngest we had was nine years old. And that gets you into the whole business of the father of that baby is not nine years old. So, that’s social work and police. But we had a whole bunch of those. And if I can change the trajectory of one person’s life by doing that. So, I mean, I feel that was the rewards I got. It wasn’t the money, because we worked like dogs. I mean, it was just the way that you can impact. And women are the future. I mean, they basically decide where the family goes for health care. And so I don’t have a problem with that. I just have been so worried because we’re going to be just like the rest of the states if the Republicans get supermajority back because then Governor can’t veto any of this stuff. That’s the only reason they hadn’t put forth anything right now.

  And I think women are marching saying that, “We’re not going back,” and my thought is you’ve already gone back in the Voting Rights things. I mean, I can remember being so proud to go with my parents in 1965 when I could vote, we could vote for the first time. So, yeah, the abortion issue I’m deeply disturbed as someone who is committed to women’s health deeply.

  Brian Wood: My grandfather was a rural family medicine doctor, and his line was always, “If you ban abortion, you’re not going to stop abortion, you’re gonna stop safe abortion.”

  Dr. Harris: Right, exactly. I feel 100 percent he was right. And that’s like prohibition.

  Brian Wood: Yeah.

  Dr. Harris: Did alcohol go away? No. No. And what’s happening to women now is just incomprehensible. I mean the other thing that we have is we got all these prenatal diagnoses now. I mean, we can diagnose prenatally and diagnose these lethal things, and you can be made to have to go through with that. I had very few patients who use abortion for birth control. And I basically would talk to them, and I would choose not to participate in providing them with another abortion, if that’s what they were doing. Because there’s no reason. I mean, that’s not acceptable.

  But I would take the time to at least counsel them and let them know why I thought they weren’t appropriate, and try to see if I could help them. But that was a handful of people. But that’s what most people think happens. And women, poor women, one, a lot of people will choose to have a baby, and that’s okay. Or you can place your baby for adoption, or you can keep your baby but it does change your trajectory of life. But to not provide funding for children, to not provide funding for prenatal care, to not expand Medicaid to take care of people.

  One of the US Senators made a comment one time where you don’t want to provide prenatal care for illegal immigrants. However, the child’s going to be a US citizen so you should want the best US citizen that you can get. So, it’s challenging.

  Brian Wood: Yeah, I think those are really interesting insights and a time that’s kind of changing a lot right now.

  Dr. Harris: Yeah.

  Brian Wood: I appreciate that. Kind of our last section here, and we kind of call passing the torch where we kind of take a 10,000-foot view and think about your career and education and things like that. So, the first question underneath that would be how does being a black physician matter in your workplace, your family, and in your community for you?

  Dr. Harris: I think being a black physician is well, my family, I mean, my wife is obviously a physician, her sister is a physician, I hope they both come to talk to you. So, I don’t think it was. I mean, my family obviously is proud of the fact that I’m a physician. But most people outside of medicine don’t really know what you do. I mean, they know that you go stay out late, work long hours, come home tired. But I don’t think they really understand all that you have to do. And we were good about turning that off even more for our children. I mean, we wanted to make sure that we didn’t continue to the medical banter at home when they had sports and other things that were important.

  Particularly, I mean, if you had a death or something in anesthesia, they had trauma and death all the time much more than we did in OB, but certainly, those things are devastating. So, I don’t think that it made – I mean my family was extremely proud. But I don’t think it made a whole lot of difference there. I will say that one of my children, I had two sons, one son is a sound engineer. He didn’t want no part of blood or anything or medicine. Although he has, I mean, he holds what we did in high regard and doesn’t feel like he missed out on anything.

  My other son did choose to go into medicine and surprised me he chose to go into OB. He went to UNC medical school, MPH UNC, he went to Duke residency and stayed there and just finished seven years in reproductive endocrinology. Has 20 plus papers published in peer-reviewed journals, and has taken a sort of private/academic job at a big fertility unit in Virginia, has a clinical appointment at Jones Institute in Norfolk. He’ll be their assistant fellowship director, so he’s on that trajectory. But so we often talk to them about did they miss things. And we worked very hard to make sure one or both of us made all their things. I mean, they were there for their plays and their athletic events.

  And so I don’t think they suffered in that way. Plus, I think there are some benefits. I mean, we took them all over the world and we pick medical meetings all over the world to go to so they did benefit from that. Their passports were stamped more than mine. As far as what it meant to the community, that’s where I think that when I retired, it almost made me cry, because different from the kind of formal party celebration that I had through the practice and folks at Duke, we had one in the office. And the outpouring of people that showed up it really made me cry, that are so thankful.

  And I think it makes a tremendous difference, particularly for all patients, for somebody to be compassionate, and somebody they can trust. In an OB I think that people would often say, Well, why would a woman want to go to a male gynecologist? and the reason that most of them who if they gave you an opportunity, would learn that you would sit there, you would know that they were on edge. So, you would sit there, you would take extra time, you would be extremely delicate and patient doing your exams, you would make sure you had appropriate chaperones in the room.

  And I mean, if you ask any of the patients that have seen my partners that the women do much harsher pelvic exams than we do because we just had an extra level of sensitivity. So, I think that it’s extremely important in the black community for them to see somebody who they feel like cares about them and understands. I don’t have to waste part of my day understanding your racial issue, because I know that, I live that, I understand that, so we can get on with taking care of medicine.

  And I think there are differences. For example, hypertension, my patients who had white physicians would come in hypertensive. Well, the next year, they’d come back hypertensive. And then I say, “Well, what’d Dr. so and so think. “Well, they just told me to lose weight and I’d be all right.” And I said, Well, that’s not working for you.” And what kills black people? hypertension, diabetes, obesity. And so I think that it does make a difference because you have a level of comfort.

  And it’s not to say all black people are that way. I mean, I think that people who, for example, have worked in black institutions, sometimes feel they’re treated even– it’s more of a crabs-in-a-barrel situation that’s very difficult also. So, I’m not saying that that one is better than the other. But I think there’s some importance in, not just for black, but anybody, if you see somebody that looks like you, and has lived your experience and can understand, because hey, let’s face it, medicine is science, is art, some of the downright damn luck. And it’s like telling somebody to eat properly, they’re gonna eat what they got. And so you need to learn how to work with that.

  And so I think that the community that’s what is important. I mean, I was in a grocery store, recently, and this little girl said, “You don’t know me.” And I looked at her. And she said, “Yeah, you saved my life.” And I said, “What do you mean?” She had DIC, sick as a dog. And that was another example of, I thought that as a 16-year-old, I might have to do a hysterectomy. So, I asked one of my colleagues, my white colleagues to do a second opinion and just put a note on her chart. And he said, “Nope, too complicated for me,” and left.

  And so, fortunately, I had another white colleague, who actually was sort of one of my mentors in the community, who took care of that for me. But those are the things. My children got sick of it, but I can’t go anywhere, even now that I mean I’ve delivered probably 10,000 babies. So, almost everywhere I go, somebody will come up and say, “Thank you for taking care of me.” And the thing that lets you made an impact is when you take care of somebody as a college student, and they bring their children to you, or they bring their mother to you.

  And that’s my goal for teaching residents, and medical students, you want to be the doctor that somebody will bring their whole family to, that they trust. And so I mean, I think the community outpouring of that’s the thing that was. I mean, I’ve had plenty of accolades, I got 14 teaching awards, I’ve been on every committee you could probably be on, but the thing that meant most to me was the community outpouring the support and love and that lets you know you made an impact.

  Brian Wood: Absolutely.

  Dr. Harris: That’s the thing. I mean, yeah, I made a good living, but it’s not about the money.

  Brian Wood: And you mentioned your impact on the world I think money matters

  Dr. Harris: Oh, absolutely. And when people tell you that. Yeah and to do that for 38 years, people ask me now, they say, “Well, how do you stay busy?” And I say, “Well, I have my hobbies that I do. And I mean, I pick and choose some volunteer things. But I don’t want anything to do on an ongoing basis because, I mean, I did clean it out. I worked enough.

  Brian Wood: Yeah, it sounds like it. And then one thing we’re asking everybody are their thoughts on what your experience has taught you about ways to support present-day minority students in medical school?

  Dr. Harris: One, I think that, well, through scholarships, it gets a little dicey, though, because I think if, I mean, if you give a scholarship to School of Medicine, you can’t really dictate who it goes to. I mean, and so it may not go to a minority patient, it could go to a majority patient, a student who’s in need of money, which is okay. But it’s difficult to do it at that level. That’s one of the reasons I contribute the money that I give to the Medical Education Development Fund.

  I also think, though, that if you have an opportunity to mentor medical students, or just be available to them if they have problems, and getting to young people, like I was, and letting somebody know that they can do this, and showing them the path of how you can do this because I mean, we had in our office, college students who might be interested in medicine. Well, one of the local colleges started sending people over there with 2.6 averages, and I said, “Well, you want to do what?” And they said, “Well, I wanna go into medicine.” “Well, you ain’t going to medical school with that.”

  So, we had to have a talk with the school, “Don’t send folk over here like that,” because again, the worst thing you can do for any student is to put them in the front row where they gonna get ground up, and spit out the back end. And if you’re not prepared for the rigor of a professional level school, you’re gonna get ground up, and that doesn’t do anybody any good. Even in our residency program, I mean, we have now eight spots, and we get thousands of applications for them. And it was just hard to get minority students because everybody wants to keep the minority students.

  So, it’s really hard to pull one away, but you don’t want to take people that you think can’t survive in that environment. I’ve seen that too many times where you just get chewed up, and they lose. So, you want to take people but you got to give them support when they get there. So, I think that any opportunity I have to interact with people interested in medicine, or medical students letting them know that they can do it. I think one thing I’ve noticed, though, is that a lot of black students haven’t been in environments where they’ve had to face this kind of racism. And so they feel like they don’t need anybody until it slaps them upside the head. And then they come and they are sort of chagrined and say “You tried to tell me that Dr. Harris, but I didn’t listen, because they still have blinders on and they don’t know.

  I guess being in the south you figured it out. But no. So, I think anyway, that you can give back, I tried giving some lectures, health talks and things at Chapel Hill High. But that’s a hornet’s nest now. I wouldn’t go to that. I mean, you can’t broach contraception. I mean in the South, in the Bible belt, our kids don’t have sex. Yeah, right. Never. So, I mean, that’s my thing about, but I think that giving back monetarily like I said, that’s the reason I haven’t really done the scholarship thing in that way. Although I wouldn’t mind having a needy student get it.

  But there are so few opportunities for minority students to get a scholarship like that. That’s why I haven’t set one of those up because I can’t really direct it to that level. So, I’ve chosen to do it through the MED program.

  Brian Wood: And I guess you’ve kind of addressed this but the last question we ask is what advice would you give to black medical students today?

  Dr. Harris: Work hard. Well, first of all, education is the key. Once you achieve an educational milestone, nobody can ever take that away from you. And my partner and I felt that that’s what enabled us to get a toehold in a competitive place like this and to create a practice that thrived like ours. It was because we had the same thing on the wall that everybody else had, if not better. And we were willing to put in the work. But so I think that making it a priority to, if you have, for example, difficulty taking tests, you need to take some test-taking skills, you need to be prepared, you need to do these question banks that everybody else does, you need to get board certified.

  If you don’t get board certified, you’re hanging out, you can only stay on the hospital staff probably five years, and then that’ll run through your board eligibility cycle. And then you’re toast. So, my advice would be pay attention to academics. Do what you love, and not what you think other people want you to do. I was chief of staff at the hospital and it was now Duke regional. And one of the white orthopedists we were reviewing some complaints about a black physician’s care. And it turns out that upon review, his care was better than everybody else’s or equal to everybody else’s. He just didn’t write good notes that you could read, but the nurses could read it.

  And but this guy’s comment to me was, “Well, you know, the only reason for having them on staff is because they can take care of people that we don’t want to.” And I’m like, “Boy, I’m a black Chief of Staff. And you got the cojones to say that out loud.” But that’s what you’re dealing with. So, my advice is to make sure you cover the bases. Don’t trip over the pebbles looking at the Horizon. Pay attention, pick things that you think that you really can be passionate about. Therefore, I mean, like my deal, it wasn’t worth it to me. And my view of it is I had a great career.

  I mean, I worked hard, but I picked the right thing, I found out what God put me here to do. And I was able to do that. So, I mean, I feel very positive about that, my contribution and about my efforts, in what I was doing, and then I ended up doing the right thing. So, because people oftentimes will pigeonhole you based on what they think you should be doing. And my wife got an anesthesia. I mean, that upset a lot of people, because that was unheard of. And why she chose that I don’t know. But it turned out to be great for her.

  So, pick something you can be passionate about and as you ascend, always reach your hand back and pull up somebody else. And just, it’s hard to find mentors because I think that I was successful, she was successful, because somebody cared about us. And you got to feel that somebody cares about you. And so, particularly medical school can be lonely. I mean, and to be honest with you, one of my partners summed it up. He said, “In order to survive in medicine, you got to be selfish.”

  And so part of that has to be even though you’re selfish, I mean, you got a family, you can’t be gone all the time. I mean, so you have to learn this work. life balance, that’s important. And fortunately, I guess educational systems are now paying attention to that. COVID sort of was an anomaly which made it very difficult for everybody. But I think that we sort of live to work. And now you guys work to live, which is good. I mean, I think it’s a better way to exist because you have to give up something to be successful in medicine. And so something either your family gets it on one end or you can’t do it all, you got to figure out how to do it. So, that’d be my advice.

  But pick if you can find a mentor. That was our problem. We just didn’t have any real mentors. And the people that were here, we just new here and they couldn’t help you. They might have wanted to. Some of the people in the Dean’s office were supportive. But my idea was to stay out the dean’s office. Yeah. So, I don’t know. That’s what I would do.

  Brian Wood: Sounds great.

  Dr. Harris: Yeah, pick what you want to do, and pick residency places to go to that you think you will fit. And that’s a lot. It’s a lot different. I don’t know about your class, but how diverse is your class now?

  Brian Wood: I think in our class, we had about 180 students and about 20 black students in our class.

  Dr. Harris: Okay, well, that’s about the same way it was back in the day.

  Brian Wood: Yeah, pretty similar.

  Dr. Harris: We had 160 Plus. But that’s the problem with Duke’s class, I mean they only got 100 seats. And it’s pretty competitive. And for example, we talking about black people, black people being African. I mean, but I think UNC and Duke to a large degree too, but I think that UNC certainly has a job and should see as its mission to train physicians for the population of North Carolina. And I would hope, and it sounds like a lot schnage, but I would hope that your experience, the experience is different. And I would hope that they will consider turning out more people than fit the population.

  Brian Wood: Yeah. I agree. I agree. Any other closing thoughts?

  Dr. Harris: No, again, I’m grateful to the opportunity to go to college at UNC and for the education that I received in undergrad and graduate level. And we were survivors, and we survived. And I think that every opportunity that I do have to come back to talk to folks, and I do know some folks in administration and I have been involved in some focus groups and with the college kids talking about medicine. But I think overall, I’d say it was not an easy experience, but it was a positive experience and not unlike life, for me, in general as a black person. So, it is what it is, and I think we made the best of it.

  Brian Wood: Yeah, well, thank you so much for taking the time for this today.

  Dr. Harris: Thank you.

  [End of Audio]

  Duration: 97 minutes

   

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About

Dr. Charles Harris was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana in 1953 and grew up in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. His mother was a schoolteacher and his father was an air force veteran who worked as a teacher and later as an assistant principal. He knew from an early age he wanted to go to medical school and enrolled at UNC as an undergraduate in 1971. He majored in chemistry and was on the charter line for UNC’s chapter of the Omega Psi Fi fraternity. He attended UNC school of medicine, where he met his wife, a fellow medical school student. He also took part in the MED program prior to his first year. While at UNC, he faced hostile rotation environments due to his race and sought to perform many of his rotations at community locations such as Greensboro or Charlotte. After graduating, he did his OBGYN residency at Duke, where he felt support from the chair of the department, Dr. Parker. Following residency, he set up a private practice in Durham that served both Black and White patients. The practice proved quite successful and soon expanded to multiple locations with several additional providers. While in private practice he also served as department chair and later chief of Staff at Durham Regional Hospital. After several decades, his practice joined the Duke network and he gained a faculty appointment at Duke. He thoroughly enjoyed teaching residents but found that it was the impact on the lives of patients and their families that was most meaningful for him.