Dr. Gloria Manley

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  Dr. Necochea: Very well. This is Dr. Raul Necochea and from UNC School of Medicine. And today is Thursday September the 8th, and I am interviewing Dr. Gloria Manley, UNC School of Medicine, class of 1976. Welcome, Dr. Manley.

  Dr. Manley: Thank you.
   
  Dr. Necochea: Dr. Manley, to begin this interview, would you please tell us your place and date of birth?

  Dr. Manley: I was born in Bertie County, North Carolina. I don’t wanna give you my date of birth.
   
  Dr. Necochea: A range?

  Dr. Manley: That’s private information. I’ll tell you that I was born on October 13th, and you can map that by the year.
   
  Dr. Necochea: Thank you, we appreciate the opportunity to do math over here. Can you tell me a little bit about your family; did you have siblings? Did you grow up with parents, grandparents?

  Dr. Manley: Yeah. I grew up and my immediate family compilation included both parents, and an older sister, and two younger brothers. One brother three years younger than myself and the other brother was eight years younger. Both my grandfathers were deceased. Well, let’s put it like this, my mother had been adopted as a young child by a woman who was probably her biological aunt, I suppose. And she was raised actually with two mothers, I didn’t realize it was an anomaly until I was a teenager, I thought everybody had three grandmothers. But anyway, so my mother’s family I don’t have a long history on because of that break that took place there, but my biological maternal grandmother was in my life. 

  As a matter of fact, the first person I ever experienced and watched die was that person when I was 9 years old. But my adopted grandmother was in our daily life, the biological grandmother had lived in New York until her last year of life when she had moved in with us in North Carolina. And she died one week after she moved in with us. My father’s family, we have a long and extensive history that his family was a racial mix of Native American. We have our Indian ancestry which included a tribe within the Tuscarora Indian nation, and we even have the history of the migration of the tribe from upstate New York when they had broken off from the Iroquois.

  We actually have I as part of our history. My grandfather, my father’s father, was a part of the quadroon mother and a White man who was born during the time of slavery. But they were never enslaved, my paternal grandfather was born in 1863. So, my paternal grandmother was 25 years his junior, so my grandfather was deceased before I was born but my paternal grandmother was in my life up until her death. Interesting, both my biological grandmothers died the same year within four months of each other. Yeah. So, the adoptive grandmother was still in my life until a few years later, she died in 1965, ’66, I can’t remember, one of those years. 

  All right. So, I have a very, very large family on paternal relatives, they just recently had a reunion. My father was one of the family historians, and then later on one of my cousins took that lead. And interesting, she’s now retired, but she was a social worker up in Philadelphia, so she has prepared, literally, a masterpiece of our family history.
   
  Dr. Necochea: Wow, that is so cool.

  Dr. Manley: Yeah, it is. I mean, and I can’t believe the manpower hours she put into researching marriages, deaths, and then of course they moved into the DNA projects. And she’s been able to connect with very extended family members basically all over the world at this point using those DNA. The White relatives originated from Scotland. And she’s now actually started to incorporate the Caucasian family descendants into the family at this point. And we had them back in the 1800s, but now she’s traced it even further back, so it’s very interesting. All right. So, I was raised in a small town in rural northeastern North Carolina, a farm community. 

  When I was born there was no electricity, it was a totally agriculture-based community. We were very independent and self-sufficient. At that time there weren’t things like social security, many people didn’t have life insurance, or health insurance, or any of those types of benefits. And basically, when I say self-sufficient, the community was totally self-sufficient. I’ve actually written a book that hopefully I’ll get published at some point.
   
  Dr. Necochea: Really?

  Dr. Manley: Yes. On my life, because we actually made everything. In my early, early childhood based upon my grandmother’s upbringing, it’s ‘cause both ladies were the matriarchs on their families, on both sides, paternal as well, and maternal side. And these ladies, I mean, we manufactured, produced, we grew everything, everything was made. The only thing we purchased from a store was things like flour and meal.
   
  Dr. Necochea: Wow. That’s impressive.

  Dr. Manley: Yeah. Very little else was purchased at a store. My paternal grandfather was multi-skilled, and he actually passed those skills onto my father. So, my father by early trade, he was a carpenter and brick mason, certified for those things. And so, he was skilled in making all kinds of wood products including building homes. So, he used to build homes for people when I was small, he also built a tobacco barn where the tobacco was cured. But the farm instruments that they used, they actually made them.
   
  Dr. Necochea: Wow.

  Dr. Manley: Yeah. And my father even in later years made his own boat ‘cause it turns out my grandfather among his many skills, and I don’t know if it was vocational or if it was just a hobby, but he made boats and actually sold them to some people. As a matter of fact, my father tells the story of how my grandparents at one point, this is paternal, actually lived on a houseboat that my grandfather had made.
   
  Dr. Necochea: That is cool.

  Dr. Manley: Throughout my childhood and even early college, I always thought that ‘cause my perception of the world was just my community really, and I thought this is how everybody in the entire world lived. I was in for a rude awakening. Most of my early childhood we did not even own an automobile. No. If my father would get one and keep it for a little bit, and he also was a mechanic, so he’d always purchase these older vehicles, and fix them up. The day I was born in the ‘50s, but the cars that my father had were from the ‘40s and maybe even from the ‘30s. So, my first exposure to an automobile are vehicles from that era. 

  And let’s see, but the people from these local communities, I mean, almost everybody owned, ‘cause there were some people who could not even afford this, had a mule and a cart. And that was a primary mode of transportation when you weren’t walking. And then, later came bicycles and things of that nature. So, I mean, I know the people in this day and era would not believe that people in the United States of America actually lived like this. The roads were unpaved by the way, in this section of rural North Carolina, most of the roads were unpaved during my early childhood. And I attended school, my first school was a one room schoolhouse where grades one through seven were educated. 

  And then, in eighth grade we were transferred to the larger school. Now, I don’t know what was happening with North Carolina doing education during that time, but in the beginning of my second grade year North Carolina, I guess, decided to shut down all these little one room schoolhouses. So, we were forced to transfer over to the larger, I don’t know, each area or district, it wasn’t just county ‘cause there was more. I’m trying to think, was there another? Of course, schools were segregated during this time ‘cause we’re still in the ‘50s. So, I was trying to think, yes, there was these two Black high schools in Bertie County. 

  That’s what I was trying to think, how many. I think there was three ‘cause there was in Powellsville, there was one in Windsor, then the one in Lewis. Yeah, so there was three. So, Bertie County had three Black high schools, and basically these schools educated grades one through 12. So, they shut down my little school, and then I had to transfer to this school called John B. Barnes, which was over in Lewis then. But that was the most traumatic experience of my top experiences in my life. 
   
  Dr. Necochea: Wow. Why?

  Dr. Manley: Why? First of all, we had this really tight really, really close knit tight neighborhood if you wanna call it that, and I guess that I’m going to say that it’s about 20 miles. Well, I won’t say radius, I’d say it’s more like a diameter, maybe 25 miles. And going back to the self-sufficiency, everybody took care of everybody else, it was a true community, the type that we need to move back to if possible. Everybody took care of everybody in the community. So, nobody was ever hungry, and poverty as it is today, it did not exist perse. I mean, it existed in the sense that you would have these families that had very little to eat, minimum clothing, but remember now, I said there was no electricity, and you didn’t have gas coming into your home. 

  So, the homes were heated by wood stoves, fireplaces. Wait a minute. Yeah. That was your source of heat. The cooking was done on wood stoves. And then lighting, we used kerosene lamps, at this part we didn’t use gas. And I know there were some places that pre-electricity used gas, but that wasn’t true in my community, it was kerosene. So, there were no kerosene heaters then, it was just the wood stoves, and the wood heaters, and kerosene lamps, and of course candles. And many people made their own candles. And just FYI, there were some people in the community, especially my grandparent’s generation, who if you didn’t have a cow then you knew somebody that did have a cow. 

  Everybody had pigs, and chickens, we did not kill a cow to eat. I’ve never had a steak and I’m trying to say I’ve probably had some hamburgers, but that was one of the things that they ultimately did start buying at the store. But nobody killed their own cow, they used the cows for milk, and then the chickens of course produced the eggs. And people probably don’t know it because they didn’t grow up like this, but North Carolina actually has three growing seasons. And we grew food crops as well as agriculture crops during all three growing seasons. And then, we canned the food, we didn’t have electricity so there were no refrigerators, we had what was called ice boxes. 
   
  Dr. Necochea: Yeah, right.

  Dr. Manley: And so, I won’t go into what ice boxes are. And then, the ice man came by twice a week for door to door to deliver ice. And by the way, some of our delivery people, they did delivery on mule and cart, just FYI. And so, growing up like this, everybody shared what they had. Now, we did kill the hogs, and one of the essential staples in our diet, of course, was pork because pretty much every piece of the hog was used for something or another. So, there were some pretty neat stuff that they did at that time, they ran down the fat and made lard for their cooking purposes and so forth. And so, if somebody was needy in the community, you shared everything that they had. 

  I mean, if somebody had a tragedy, they lost their home for whatever reason, I mean, everybody sort of lived in shacks. And people didn’t really pay rent, the people had houses built, they were the farmers, and they would build the houses for their workers to live in. And they did what was called share cropping, and so there was no rent payment for the house structure, it was basically an exchange for labor. Yeah. That’s how it was done. But if lightning did come strike a home or whatever, but everybody in the community chipped in with everything. So, in many cases the person ended up with more things after the calamity than what they had before because of all of the donations that were made. 

  And that’s how it was done. So, I mean, everybody knew everybody. And now, I always laugh when they talk about discrimination because North Carolina is a part of the south, and of course we were aware of the separation of the races perse, but in these rural areas frequently your neighbors could’ve been either Black or White, it really didn’t make a lot of difference. Because we really couldn’t afford to mistreat each other ‘cause we needed each other. So, the way that I experienced discrimination in my early childhood was probably very different than the average person in the United States.
   
  Dr. Necochea: That’s very interesting. Dr. Manley. Can I ask you one other question about growing up? With all this, the large family that you had in this very tight knit community you grew up with, did you know a physician when you were young?

  Dr. Manley: A physician?
   
  Dr. Necochea: Yeah. Did you know one or many?

  Dr. Manley: Okay. This is it, let me tell you. Yes, I did. Every community had a physician somewhere around someplace. Okay. I’m holistic in terms of my medical practice because, again now, the area in North Carolina where I’m from remember now, the lost colony and the early settlers, they came into the area of North Carolina where I lived. So, the Tuscarora Indians were already there, we had occupied that part of North Carolina and Virginia for probably about 900 years. We’ve been there a long time. So, when the Whites came in, so bear in mind that everybody was Native American, and if you know the history of Tuscarora, you know that the Tuscarora’s were agriculturally based. 

  And so, our folks were already growing corn and they were already producing tobacco, that was before the White people arrived all this was already happening. So, but when the Whites came, they also then brought in the Black slaves, so this was how the population got mixed over there. But Whites, there were too many of us, they couldn’t wipe us all out. So, many of the practices from the Native Americans carried on. So, there was a mixing of culture but there was never a loss of the early Native American culture, it was never totally lost, not in this section at least. So, my grandparents on both sides, first of all, doctors were only basically to pronounce you dead.

  I felt bad they didn’t even get called upon for that purpose. It wasn’t until the state made laws that required you have a death certificate. ‘Cause I don’t know if you know or not but prior to, I think the ‘40s it was, they weren’t required to have birth certificates, and you weren’t required to have death certificates either I don’t think. Okay. Then I gotta back up and tell you, in the town my father came from, my father actually grew up in Hertford County rather than Bertie County, but one of my father’s sisters married, they started the first funeral home in our area. 
   
  Dr. Necochea: Wow.

  Dr. Manley: Yes. As a matter of fact, my first cousin, she just died last year, and she was 96 when she died, she told me her father he owned the first telephone for Black. ‘Cause about this time they didn’t want to recognize the Indians, so everybody got grouped. The Indians had a choice back probably starting in late 1700s, they could either marry White and be White, or they could marry Black and be Black. But they decided that they were not going to recognize the Native American population. Now, I had a cousin Howard, as a matter of fact, and his father they got the second funeral home. But Howard became a representative in the state assembly a few years ago, and he actually forced the state of North Carolina to recognize the Meherrin tribe in Ahoskie. 

  But so, the state actually does now recognize the Indians and Indian descendants there, but the federal government still does not, but that’s just comments. But anyway, my father’s sister, with their funeral home ‘cause they had the very first telephone for Blacks or minorities in Bertie County.
   
  Dr. Necochea: Wow. So, you’ve had those folks in your family and if I understand you at least were conversing in some traditions of Native Americans and healing from a young age.

  Dr. Manley: Yeah, always. Let me think. First of all, I was never sick. I did not have sickness; I did not know sickness until after I left home. 
   
  Dr. Necochea: Wow. That’s very nice, very fortunate. When you were in high school, I imagine your high school was also a segregated one, correct? 

  Dr. Manley: Okay. By the time I got to high school we were into the civil rights movement, ‘cause I was in high school in the ‘60s. So, we were in the civil rights movement, as a matter of fact, in the early parts of it my father was very political minded, he was very much into the civil rights movement. And when I was 12, 13, something there I had to spend part of my summer going from house to house to solicit, to try to get Black people to register to vote, and to register them to vote. I had to remember I walked so much during the hot summer I had blisters on my feet. And then, as did my mother ‘cause my mother she held very tightly to my sister, she did not want us to go anywhere but dad had the final say. 

  So, we were actually allowed to go participate in some of the civil rights gatherings, I don’t know if people even remember the name Golden Frinks, but I remember going to one gathering. And this is when we knew about the Ku Klux Klan, and they did actually have Ku Klux Klan folks around because there’s no such thing as utopia and perfection. So, there were some evils, and I think that’s the best way to refer the evil White people in our community. And I don’t know but there were some evil people who held hatred. I suppose it’s interesting, ‘cause the community probably started to change, well not probably, it had started to change. 

  But there were never any major racial incidents, but when the civil rights movement started there started to be some separation. And I really cannot address where exactly how it came into the community except, we started to grow, and then certain migrations had started to take place. So, there was nothing in the way of employment except working on the farm, and for those people who grew up in that grooming hard work, but you didn’t wanna do that. So, a lot of the people had started to leave, and this was long before civil rights, like my biological maternal grandmother. She left North Carolina and went to New York, she gave over my mother and her two sisters to my adopted grandmother. 

  And she went to New York where she could work in a factory and live a better lifestyle rather than the poverty stricken one that we had there. And then, the shipyard stuff in Virginia were there, and so the young men would finish high school, and then move up to Virginia, especially up to the high-water area for work and employment. So, again, better lifestyles and so forth. And then, people from the cities, they had gone away and started to come back, so they didn’t bring back good stuff, good ways. All right. So, let’s move on, you had asked me about high school. So, high school, what Bertie County did for whatever reason, it decided to build two brand new high schools that were identical. 

  This was in 1963 but the US government had mandated integration by this time, so I think their intent was to have the Blacks continue to go to stay separated and go to the school that was identical to the other one. The only thing that was different was that they did offer a little bit larger curriculum at the White school than what they did at the Black school. But interesting enough, they actually put the Black school, as it turned out, in the best location, and they put the White school too close to the swamps. And by being a brand new school, some of the folks who graduated on up to [inaudible] [00:38:09] came back, so we had a very good teaching staff. 

  What was it called? I was suggested to what was called the Freedom of Choice by the time I got in high school. I did not have to go to the all Black school, if I wanted to I elected to go to the White high school. And this is one time my father allowed my sister and I a choice. Well, both of us chose to go to the all Black school, and we had a great experience by the way. We had a great curriculum, we had some very excellent teachers, and it was good. Our high school was only a school for four years, my class was the last one to graduate from my high school because the very next year the state of North Carolina had then gone into forced integration. 

  Yeah. So, North Carolina went into forced integration, so my school year was the very last year, that was 1968, that we were a high school. And then, the school became the junior high ‘cause I think they still kept the grade school, so they had actually at that point had the high school, junior high, and then the grade school. That’s what North Carolina did. 
   
  Dr. Necochea: Sorry. I wanted to follow up on the good experience that you mentioned having in high school. And I was wondering if something about that good experience is what pushed you to go to college or if that’s something that came after?

  Dr. Manley: It was definitely, ‘cause we had very good, very progressive faculty. Well, I graduated valedictorian of my class back then.
   
  Dr. Necochea: Congratulations.

  Dr. Manley: Anyway, I had very supportive teachers who actually taught me, and who actually showed interest. And all the way up to the assistant principle I say I had a wonderful high school, I truly, truly did. That they encouraged attendance, our principle well he was known to be very, very strict, he was too strict, but he enforced the rules and the regulations. For instance, during the ‘60s the miniskirts were in but our principle said absolutely no miniskirts were allowed, he had a dress code even though we didn’t do uniforms. And on Fridays the males were forced to wear ties, yes. And the girls, well we could never be sloppy, we were not allowed to wear pants, we could only wear dresses. 

  I ran into the same thing when I first started college too, this private college in Virginia I was so angry. And so, by the time I got to medical school when I could wear pants, I stopped wearing dresses, and I very seldom wear a dress even to this day ‘cause I wanted to wear pants. 
   
  Dr. Necochea: It was an all out rebellion. 

  Dr. Manley: Anyway, and we did have a couple of White teachers at our high school ‘cause, again, the civil rights act had already been passed and legislated. Yeah. I mean, it wasn’t the lackadaisical kind of stuff that you have now, the teachers were actively engaged, and we had a full experience in terms of activity. There were all kinds of activities that went on, I mean, I had for instance I was able to take even up to advanced chemistry. So, I had regular chemistry, then advanced chemistry, and the same thing was true for physics. I didn’t do physics, but it was there, but it was also true for biology. 

  And then, they had brought in some vocational activities during this time. Actually, the education in North Carolina, and I’m not saying these folks were wherever I was, and I think it was true throughout the state, was far better in the ‘60s than what it is now. Because I have my cousins are on school boards, and we frequently talk about how, I mean, they don’t even have enough teachers now, it’s terrible. And the students aren’t learning anything, it’s terrible actually, it’s awful over in Bertie County.
   
  Dr. Necochea: Wow. I believe it and the pandemic hasn’t helped of course.

  Dr. Manley: Yeah. It was pretty bad, the state had actually to go in at one point and put them on a, what is it called? They call it a repair plan. There’s been several counties over there, and the same thing was true for Halifax County too. They almost shut Halifax school system down it was so terrible at one point. But anyway, it was the total opposite, I think that’s interesting, during the ‘60s. It was great. I mean, we had social activities that went on all through the year, it was great fun. We had very active sports teams and it was really nice.
   
  Dr. Necochea: That’s great. When you finished high school where did you go to college?

  Dr. Manley: When I finished high school, I went to now called Hampton University, it was called Hampton Institute, which is one of the oldest Black colleges. It’s the second oldest I think, Howards has the titles for being the oldest. Actually, Hampton is the oldest, but when Hampton was first started, it was started for Indians, not for Blacks. And that was back in the 1860s I think when Hampton was first started. And then, it later became for Blacks, but it’s a very historical Black college.
   
  Dr. Necochea: Was it an expensive institution also?

  Dr. Manley: Hampton?
   
  Dr. Necochea: Yes.

  Dr. Manley: Yeah. Hampton was one of the most expensive ones. Hampton, at the time that I finished, I was given a partial scholarship ‘cause that was the most they gave, they did not give full scholarships. Now, I was offered a full scholarship to attend UNC.
   
  Dr. Necochea: Really?

  Dr. Manley: Yes. I refused it. 
   
  Dr. Necochea: Can you please tell me more about why?

  Dr. Manley: Because I knew that I was not psychologically ready for the trauma for a predominantly White school. ‘Cause I’ll skip now and move to what actually happened to me when I first got to UNC. I chose because I felt like I needed to be in the care of my people for a little bit longer, I actually felt that. And I made the correct decision too, I absolutely did. I wanted to have a few more years and I felt like I could get a good education at Hampton, and I did. And I felt that socially I still have a very good experience, and a few of the people had started to go into the predominantly White settings, and they were traumatized, they were beaten down. 

  I mean, one of my closest friends who did elect to go to UNC, he used to write me these terrible letters about how miserable he was. And the same thing happened to the few Black students who had chosen to go to the White high school. I mean, I guess they made themselves the sacrificial lambs but I’m too self-centered, I wasn’t willing to sacrifice myself, I wasn’t willing to do that, you can’t slaughter me. So, I waited until medical school. ‘Cause I graduated with high honors at Hampton, and by the way the valedictorian of the Hampton class of that year, she’s also from North Carolina, she’s a judge now, Alison Duncan. 
   
  Dr. Necochea: I don’t know her.

  Dr. Manley: And she was originally from Durham I think, and she went back there, and she became a history major, I think. I always thought it was therapy because those people major in history and English, they all had higher grade point average than us who majored in science. I resented that, I said, “That’s not fair.” And not only that but the time that I attended Hampton, credit for any course including things like organic chemistry and all those ones where I had 10 hours of lab in addition to the dietetic classroom setting. So, that was 13 hours a week of one class, I could only get four hour grad point credits for it.
   
  Dr. Necochea: Yeah, you’re right. I agree, that’s a little bit unfair. I’m gathering because of your course work that you were already very keen on the sciences, perhaps medicine already in college?

  Dr. Manley: Yeah. I felt like I was fairly well prepared, that was not the issue for me. 
   
  Dr. Necochea: Sorry. Let me backtrack. When was it that you started thinking of medicine as a career?

  Dr. Manley: Okay. I had skipped that part, you want to hear that. I did not want to be a doctor, I wanted to be a veterinarian. I loved outdoors and I loved animals, still do, and animals were the love of my life. And I wanted to be a veterinarian, and then I told my department chairman if I couldn’t be a veterinarian, then I was going to go in and become a plant physiologist. Okay. Let me back up. Okay. When I first started college, I was not a science major. The guidance counselors at my high school loved me, so they actually created an organization called the Guidance Committee so that I could be president of it. 
   
  Dr. Necochea: That’s great. 

  Dr. Manley: But I used to hang out with them all of the time, and then they kept telling me, “We want you to take psychology.” So, one of my guidance counselors actually started a psychology course at my high school ‘cause she was determined that I was going to be a psychologist. So, she created this course of psychology in high school, I absolutely loved it, so when I went to college, I elected to major in psychology my first year.
   
  Dr. Necochea: All right.

  Dr. Manley: But during that year, first year of college is all regular college courses and so forth, ‘cause this was a generous college. We were still required to take the English, the basic math, the basic science, so I chose biology. I had done well in biology in high school. Well, I think it was required that first year. So, I’m trying to think now if it was first year or second, I’m trying to remember. And then, of course, we had to do a foreign language. I had to take a sociology course. No. I took a psychology course that first year, that’s what it was. And the psychology course I had, let’s put it like this, it was not challenging at all, I did not even open my book hardly the entire year, and I had straight 100s. But I didn’t like that, and then I had to take sociology, which I absolutely despised.
   
  Dr. Necochea: You did not like that.

  Dr. Manley: I mean, I hated it. In the meantime, I had taken a biology course that was mandatory at Hampton and went swimming where I almost drowned one day. But ultimately, I think that woman gave me a B, I can’t remember why, but I had worked my tail off really. It was very challenging, and despite the fact that I had had excellent grades in biology in high school, but the biology course actually had covered more in terms of the moving into the classifications of plants and so forth that we really hadn’t studied. I mean, in high school it was more like cell function, cell structure, and stuff like that, but in college we got more into extensive barriers of biology, and anthropology, and even other kinds of things it touched on. 

  But it was very challenging, and I loved it.  But I think it was my second year or something, whichever one, I just said, “Enough of this psychology.” I went in and changed my major to biology. Okay. So, the guy that was chairman of biology at the time, his wife was my botany professor. I don’t know when I’d taken it, but she also taught plants and physiology too, her name was Hazel, she was great, I loved her. And both of them were professors there, and he reviewed my transcript or whatever when I got ready to transfer. I transferred and I was gonna be going for a BS so that I could do teaching as a backup ‘cause I wasn’t thinking medical school at that point. 

  But he looked at my transcript and said, “No. I’m not going to approve for a BS transfer for you, only a BA transfer.” His name was Robert Bonner, he just took charge of my life after that. And by time I got to the end of my junior year there was a scholarship program that came up that was available at Duke University, they were trying to bring Black students up to part with White students. So, they started what they called a pre-med program during the summer, I don’t know how many years this thing went on. But Dr. Bonner heard about it, and he came, and told me, ‘cause I wasn’t gonna go. But then he told me they were gonna give me money, he told me Duke was gonna give me money, and Hampton was gonna give me money to go. I said, “Oh!”
   
  Dr. Necochea: That’s nice.

  Dr. Manley: “You’re gonna pay me to go? Well, I’m going.” You’re gonna pay me to go, that’s a whole different ball game. 
   
  Dr. Necochea: Of course.

  Dr. Manley: It was the best summer of my life back then. And they told me, they said, “Well, you aren’t supposed to go there and have fun, Gloria.” But I did. So, we had to do projects during that summer, and the project that I selected was actually a neurophysiology project. And I can’t remember his name, I see his face, but it was this very complicated kinda deal. Anyway, I got a very good evaluation at the end of the summer, and I don’t know how ‘cause I did more partying than I’d ever done. Anyway, so in my senior year, that’s when it started, my department chairman came up, and we had to make a choice. And I told him I wanted to apply to veterinarian school, and he said, “No.” 
   
  Dr. Necochea: No? Okay.

  Dr. Manley: Yup, he did. He told me no, he got so audacious. He got up and he said not only was he not going to, “’Cause I will personally see to it that your transcript will not be released to go to any veterinarian schools, graduate schools.” And then, he got really bodacious, and he said, “Only to medical school and only one of the top 10 in the country.” 
   
  Dr. Necochea: Wow. That’s amazing. Wow. Go ahead.

  Dr. Manley: He said, “UNC.” At that time, ‘cause we’re talking 1971, so we’re up in there now, UNC was rated number 11 at that time. And Duke was number four, I think Case Western was number two, something like that, or vice versa. Either Duke was number two and Case Western was number four, one or the other. So, he said he’d made an exception, he said, “I will release your transcript to go to UNC at number 11, but that’s only because you’re from the state of North Carolina.” Yes, he did. And he kept his promise, he kept his word, he did exactly what he said he was gonna do. 
   
  Dr. Necochea: Where else did you apply for medical school?

  Dr. Manley: I applied to Duke, and then ‘cause I told my parents I was sick of North Carolina and I was gonna get as far away from them and the state as I could, so I applied to I think it was Chicago Medical.
   
  Dr. Necochea: Wow, that’s far.

  Dr. Manley: Wait a minute, what’s the name of that school? And I applied to Creighton University.
   
  Dr. Necochea: Creighton in Nebraska?

  Dr. Manley: Yeah.
   
  Dr. Necochea: That’s even farther.

  Dr. Manley: I told them I was gonna get as far away as I could. So, Creighton and Chicago were not in the top 10, so Dr. Bonner did not allow my transcript to go to either one of them. So, Chicago Medical turned me down ‘cause they said, “We never got your transcript.” Okay. Wait a minute. But Creighton was so desperate, I guess they were trying to get some minority students, I don’t know what they were trying to do, they actually ended up accepting me.
   
  Dr. Necochea: Wow. Without a transcript?

  Dr. Manley: Yeah, they did, they accepted me. Then Duke had an interesting response.
   
  Dr. Necochea: What did they say?

  Dr. Manley: Duke put me on their waiting list, and they sent my department chairman a note that said, “The only reason we’re not giving her an actual position is because she parties way too much.” And they weren’t sure that I was serious about medical school, that’s exactly what they said. But I was okay with that, I said, “All right. I don’t care.” Now, Case Western was not on my list, then my department chairman came, or somebody from one of the offices, and told me that there was a scholarship that had been left by someone at Hampton for the very first student who would be admitted to Case Western. 

  And it would cover the entire four years, yeah. So, I applied but when I applied, I didn’t know about that, so when I applied it was late. I don’t think they had full closed, but they were near the closing date for their applications. But they reviewed everything, and I went for an interview, we had a good interview, and they really wanted me there, but they had basically pretty much already accepted their full compliment of students. And I guess they waited to see if everybody was going to accept their offers, and they did, so they could not offer me a position for the ’72-’73 year, but they confirmed me a position in the next year. 

  So, I thought about that very seriously, I did my backup plan, I applied to the federal government to become a national park forest ranger. And there was something else I applied for too, but I applied for that. I knew that I would not go back to go to medical school the next year, I knew I wouldn’t, and then UNC of course had accepted me. So, I decided to go to UNC, but I was very angry. 
   
  Dr. Necochea: About UNCs acceptance?

  Dr. Manley: I was very angry that my department chairman did not permit me to apply to veterinarian school.
   
  Dr. Necochea: Right, that. 

  Dr. Manley: I wanted to be a veterinarian. So, when I got to UNC, and all this going up to this, I entered it, I was pissed off when I started. I know I was supposed to be appreciative, but I really wasn’t, I didn’t feel that. I didn’t feel appreciation, I didn’t. Let me back up a little bit. I knew that if I had pushed back, I could’ve got into Duke if I really wanted to, but one of the main reasons why I accepted UNC is at that point in time it was on a pass-fail system. And on my interview, we had to have a discussion about a number of things, and one of the things they talked about was the suicide rate among medical students. 

  And they had noted that one of the reasons why they changed their grading system to the pass-fail system was to try to alleviate some of the pressure to perform on the students so that they could just focus more on learning rather than on the grade. Duke was doing it. And then, they were sort of sitting down comparing statistics between UNC and Duke at the same time, and I liked that because I said, “Okay, good.” I mean, I wasn’t interested in trying to be the top medical student, but I did want to learn, and I didn’t want the pressure of the grade. And I thought, “Okay. All right. If I go to medical school and all I have to do is pass, I can pass.” 
   
  Dr. Necochea: Yeah, right.

  Dr. Manley: If that’s all it’s about is passing, I said, “I’m pretty sure I can pass.” And that at the same time have to give up my whole life. Can you hold on one second? This is my brother, I gotta make sure it’s not an emergency. Just hold just one second, please.
   
  Dr. Necochea: Sure. Of course, sure. Hello. 

  Dr. Manley: Okay. 
   
  Dr. Necochea: So, I was about to ask you about when you started at UNC in the School of Medicine if there were several other African American medical students or if there were only a few? 

  Dr. Manley: There were 11 or 12 of us. 
   
  Dr. Necochea: Okay. Which is not bad considering the entering class size, right?

  Dr. Manley: Yeah. When I started east Carolina had started a medical school, but it was only two years, so in the third year their students, I don’t remember how many it was but at least 20, would come over and join us. So, they became graduates with us in the final graduating class. When I started, I think there was supposed to have been 120 graduating, or 140, or something students. It was probably less than that because there had been some dropouts along the way. And one of the Black students in my class was actually from the previous class, but she had gotten pregnant, school forced her to take off. 

  So, she had to come back and repeat the freshman year because of her pregnancy. So, I think there were 12 African American students, I can’t remember if any African American students came over from east ECU or not. I don’t remember now. But I just remember there had been 12 of us.
   
  Dr. Necochea: And a few minutes ago, you were telling me that part of the reason you went to Hampton was because you were not quite ready to be in a majority White institution that was like UNC, but now here you are. 

  Dr. Manley: I gotta get you to tell you the insults I got. They had a reception, a welcoming party, for the Black students. I don’t know, school started in August, so somewhere in the end of August, first of September, I think it was part of the orientation, so it must’ve been done in the first week or something. Well, they didn’t have any Black professors, there wasn’t a single Black professor at UNC in the School of Medicine when I went there, when I started for sure. They had alcohol at this reception, so this guy had had a significant amount to drink, he came up to me and he said to me that, “Oh well, I guess they brought you in because they killed two birds with one stone.” 

  Yes. I did not respond how I typically would have, I mean, because I was still sizing up the place before I decided to be the real me. So, I did not give him a full response, I think I just walked off, didn’t even respond to it. Okay. But it was three incidents that took place in medical school that were significant. One, I used to sit the first two years of medical school, my ex-husband was very angry because I said all I have to do is pass and that’s all. ‘Cause I still wanted to go to veterinarian school, so in my first year of medical school they published a notice ‘cause hey wanted to start a veterinarian school in North Carolina, and they had plans to do so. 

  But at that point in time, they still didn’t have a veterinarian school, but they wanted to go ahead and start preparation. So, what they did was they came up with this plan because veterinarian school, and one of the reasons I didn’t push veterinarian school from college, was far more expensive than medical school. Can you believe it?
   
  Dr. Necochea: Really? I’m surprised.

  Dr. Manley: It was. And besides that, at UNC when I started, my tuition during my first two years was only between $800-900. I needed money because UNC said that we could not work, we could not have babies, they prefer that we not be married when we started. But they were very serious about the work part, they said they wanted our full attention directed towards our medical studies and didn’t want any competing agendas. And one guy, who was an older guy, married and he already had a child, and so forth, he was one of the Black people, one of the 12, he was already a pharmacist. 

  And he tried to abide by that, but he couldn’t because there just wasn’t enough money for his family, and so he apparently took on a job. They kicked him out of medical school, yes, they did, he got kicked out. 
   
  Dr. Necochea: What? 

  Dr. Manley: I mean, so the money I did get was money basically to live on ‘cause there was no money to live on otherwise, but it still wasn’t a large piece of money. If I had gone to veterinarian school, I had to pay these larger tuitions, plus the living expenses. What North Carolina did though, they had this committee designated to select some students to apply to veterinarian school. And what the offer was they had eight veterinarian schools on the list, and the state of North Carolina would pay the difference between the in state and the out of state tuition for any North Carolina student that was accepted to go there. 

  And on the veterinarian schools they had Tuskegee I think ‘cause Tuskegee was the only Black school that offered veterinary medicine at that time, I don’t know about now. But the one that I had my heart set on was the Ohio State, I wanted to go to a higher state to a veterinarian school. That was the one that I had wanted to attend, to apply to, even when I was in college. All right. So, 
  Minnesota had just started a veterinarian school and somebody else had too. Anyway, I applied, here’s the funny part, and I went in for an interview to the committee, I think there was about six White guys on the committee that did the interview. 

  And this one guy says to me, he says, “I’m pretty sure that I interviewed you last year for medical school.” I had to laugh. So, I said, “Well, I can’t tell them the real truth.” But there I was, I don’t even remember how I responded to him at that point, and I just start laughing, I thought this was hilarious. But I got accepted.

  Dr. Necochea: What? 

  Dr. Manley: Yes, I did. I got accepted, they kept pushing me, they wanted me to go to Tuskegee. So, I said, “Nope, not planning to go to Tuskegee, I wanna go to a Ohio state.” And then, they convinced me to go to, I think, it was the University of Minnesota, it was a new school. But between what North Carolina was gonna pay and then Minnesota said they would even pay more money for that if the person would come and attend their school. So, I thought about that for a while, but I didn’t wanna go to Minnesota, I felt like that was too foreign for me, I couldn’t handle that. So, I thought about Ohio State, Ohio State was fairly expensive even on the in state tuition. 

  So, I went home, and I thought about it, I’m saying, “Okay. I got $800 a year at UNC for medical school and I know I’ll have a much better future for this.” Versus, I think, Ohio State, I can’t remember, I think it was $4,000-5,000 a year that I was gonna have to borrow to try to survive. And I thought about it, and I said, “I finally made a decision to stay.” So, after I had made that decision, my attitude changed, I was a better student. I finally acknowledged that I was gonna go to medical school. So, when you asked me when did I decided to go to medical school, I decided to go to medical school in my second year of medical school. 
   
  Dr. Necochea: Right. After you exhausted the other possibility. 

  Dr. Manley: I had to satisfy myself that I had made a decision not to go to veterinarian school. And I did not conclude that until my second year of medical school. 
   
  Dr. Necochea: Who are you closest to in the School of Medicine amongst students, or faculty, maybe administrators?

  Dr. Manley: Students, definitely. There were faculty memories that I really like. I like Dr. Bakewell, and I don’t know whatever happened to him, but he was on the medical faculty. He was a psychiatrist, but he was one of the administrative advisors, he was advisor for our class, that’s what it was. I was trying to remember because each class had its own advisor, he was the one for our class, and I liked him. And I loved Dr. Fischer, who was the professor in ENT, I think he was head of the ENT department. 
   
  Dr. Necochea: Newt Fischer?

  Dr. Manley: Yeah, I think.
   
  Dr. Necochea: I can’t remember, but I think I recognize that name. 

  Dr. Manley: He had a great sense of humor, I loved him. So, him and his wife was a microbiology professor, she taught microbiology there. But he was a hoot, I liked him. So, Dr. Bakewell was a good class advisor, and it was interesting ‘cause Cornelius Cathcart called me up after talking to me, and he was trying to remember the name of this Black guy that they had hired to advise us. He was supposed to have been the advisor for the Black students or something and Cornelious wanted to know his name ‘cause he couldn’t remember his name, and I said, “I can’t remember his name, but I can tell you this; he certainly wasn’t a good advisor.” I don’t remember him doing anything. 

  And then Brenda Adams from personnel, we’re also still close friends, so I asked Brenda, and Brenda didn’t even remember him period. Anyway, but I was close to students, I had close friends that were both Black and White students. So, I mean, medical school wasn’t too bad, but I do want to comment, I think it was still in the second year, because I used to sit at the back of the class and sleep. That’s all I have to tell you about the veterinarian school, ‘cause up until the time that I made the decision that I really wanted to go to veterinarian school I had contemplated flunking out of medical school on purpose. I really had ‘cause I had never quit anything in my life, and I knew my father, I think he probably would’ve gone, and gotten him a whip, and whipped me. 

  So, I wasn’t sure that I could quit. So, I said, “If I can’t quit then maybe I can just flunk out.” So, I would sit in the back of the class on group lectures, and the math lectures, and sleep through most of it. One day, I’ll remember his name if I think about it hard enough, this guy he got up in the lecture, he was a person who always had a pretty ugly attitude, but he actually referenced us. Whenever they were giving medical statistics, they always wanted to give racial statistics, so he actually used the word niggers.
   
  Dr. Necochea: What?!

  Dr. Manley: Yeah. You didn’t hear about this?
   
  Dr. Necochea: No.

  Dr. Manley: He used the word nigger in his lecture. And I’m sitting there, back of the class, asleep, at least mostly, and I got up. I actually interacted, I had more White student friends than I did Black student friends at that time, and I turned to him, and he was a White student. And I said, “Did I hear what I thought I heard?” He said, “Did you think you heard the word nigger?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Well, that’s what you heard.” I mean, everybody started talking, and then he told everybody to shut up, this was during the lecture. He told everybody to shut up when they all started talking and so forth, and so after the class several of the White students went to several of the Black students and were asking, “What should we do here? Should we demand an apology? What should we do?” 

  And all of the other Black students that are in a class, they start to shove us, and they walked off. I could not do that even though I hadn’t even heard his lecture ‘cause I slept through it. I could not walk off, I couldn’t do that, so I went up to him as they all filed out. So, I just up to him, and I told him, I said, “I don’t appreciate that word. I feel offended that you would stand here and use such a word.” So, you know what he did?
   
  Dr. Necochea: What?

  Dr. Manley: He apologized to me, and he made very clear that his apology was to me and not the rest of the class.
   
  Dr. Necochea: How little sense that makes, and this is a person who graduated medicine, and went on to have a career in medicine, and everything.

  Dr. Manley: Yes. He was one of the professors, he was an MD professor. So, can you imagine having anybody, a Black person, ever going to him for treatment?
   
  Dr. Necochea: Nope.

  Dr. Manley: But I also took it to a level other, I went to the dean’s office.
   
  Dr. Necochea: Good for you.

  Dr. Manley: I said, “I don’t care what the rest of the students do, they can do or not do whatever, but I’m gonna go on record having made this statement.” So, I did, I went to the dean’s office, and I reported it.
   
  Dr. Necochea: Good. Was it Dean Taylor? Who was it at the time in charge?

  Dr. Manley: No. And I don’t know, I didn’t speak directly to the dean ‘cause there was the assistant. And I was trying to remember the name of the guy, it’s probably on my diploma some place. I don’t remember his name, but he was very nice, he was one of the second level, down the associate vein, or something. His name wasn’t Taylor, I remember he was a good looking guy too. ‘Cause the dean was usually difficult get to, I mean, with all of his duties, I guess. But the report was made at the office, they acknowledged it. One other thing happened, and that was of the surgical professors, we had dog lab, well I’ll tell you his name, it was Mandel. 

  He was the one who did the dog lab, but he was also a general surgeon. So, everybody had to do dog lab under him for those six weeks, and then I had to do another four weeks. Surgery was 12 weeks, so it must’ve been a month of the dog lab ‘cause then you had to do a basic surgical rotation, and then we had to do a specialized surgery rotation. So, for my specialty surgery I did ENT with Dr. Fischer, and then at the general one I did with Mandell. And then, we had to come in on Saturdays, part of that was for we had to have these little group meetings, they had divided it four students per supervisor to come in on Saturdays. 

  So, what Mandell would do on our Saturday, I was the only female, and of course the only Black in my little group, there was three White guys there, he would get in there, and try to embarrass me, always talking about the breasts. I mean, it was the same topic every Saturday, where he was talking about the breasts, and it was a lot of sexual innuendos that was there, which I felt like were grossly inappropriate, and it really pissed me off. So, finally, one Saturday I had had enough, and I told him that whatever it was that he said, I threw back at him, I said, “Why don’t we discuss the penis? Let’s talk about that.” He got so embarrassed and so mad at me. 

  So, we had to do the oral exam for surgery, so he specially asks to have me to examine. So, he did, and all of his questions, I answered, and I knew I answered correctly. Now, okay, so he had already graded me for dog lab Tuskegee so that grade was already in, and it was a decent grade. And I got excellent grades in ENT, but he gave me a marginal failure grade, I can’t remember what it was, for his section. I don’t know what UNC is doing now, and this is what I think I liked about UNC too was the grading system. It had the subjective rating, and it had the numerical, numerical was based upon the actual score points that you were given for each rotation. 

  So, even though it wasn’t the traditional grading system perse, you still had a 3.2 and above was still the A grade, and the B grade would be whatever, from the 2.9 to the 3.1, or whatever. So, even with the bad grade that he gave me, my numerical score for my 12 weeks of surgery was still a 3.0 ‘cause he couldn’t change that. But once he had evaluated me on his subjective, he was the one who had to write it since he did the test, he wrote that I was marginal, which did not fit the numerical score. So, I took that to the dean’s office, and this is the end of the third year, and said, “I want to know how I can get a marginal for all of surgery when I have a 3.0 numerical score.” 

  Everybody in the dean’s office was involved, they all looked at it, and said, “Well, we’d like to know how that could happen too.” I’d say in the end I was very pleased with the suppose I got from the dean’s office ‘cause they actually confronted Mandell. They also brought in the department chairman of surgery who was, I see his face, I’m blocking his name right now, he was a little short guy. But they brought him in, and Mandell refused to change his subjective grading, and the department chairman of surgery refused to override it. So, the dean’s office was so pissed off with it. I had my first rotation in my fourth year with a surgical ER, and the intern who was basically my guide, he knew about the case ‘cause it was traded with him, they wanted to see how I was gonna perform on that.

  Well, he gave me a 4.0. So, this is what’s on my transcript to this day, the dean’s office wrote a note addendum to my surgical evaluation to say this; I actually got an apology from the entire university.
   
  Dr. Necochea: Really?

  Dr. Manley: Yes, I did. They told me they were sorry; it was an obvious case of discrimination, they did not agree with what had happened, and they felt like it was really an embarrassment to the university that that would happen to me. And they also told me that they were gonna try to do their best to make sure that I never suffered any negative consequences as a result of that. So, they made the interest onto my record that the school disagreed with that, they made a note of the fact that what my score had been with the other division surgery. Yeah. I had taken orthopedics, that was the other one, and I had gotten a 3.8 in orthopedic surgery too with those guys ‘cause they were a hoot. 

  I enjoyed that rotation with those crazy guys. But anyways, so that’s my experience at medical school. 
   
  Dr. Necochea: Wow. This is amazing. And I mean, I’m glad to hear that you had some steady support from  the administration, but it was because you asked for it. 

  Dr. Manley: That’s what that extra four years going to Hampton did for me and also being raised by the father that I had. I had moved from a fear. So, rather than being intimidated, ‘cause I see racism a lot like just bullying, and I refuse to allow myself to be bullied. 
   
  Dr. Necochea: By the way, since you mentioned residency, what did you go into residency for?

  Dr. Manley: I wanted to do family practice, that’s another whole story. I wanted to do family practice, but again, my concept of medicine has always been holistic having been raised on herbs. And throughout my entire childhood I was raised on natural treatments, and natural treatments I had always experienced healing, and good health. So, that was something that I wanted to incorporate into medicine, family medicine was not a specialty when I finished medical school. They were trying to look at it, they were moving from this general practice thing, and trying and thinking about creating the family practice. 

  But the family practice residency and the specialty program did not occur until ’82, so I finished medical school in ’76. So, they had just started then to do the residency, but it didn’t actually become a specialty, it didn’t actually get its own board until 1982, I believe it was, whenever it got its own board. But I wanted to do family practice, and they had started a few family practice programs, there weren’t that many around. And of course, California has always been avant-garde. Wait, let me back up. The family practice programs I had investigated, most of them only had two months of psychiatry out of three years, and two months of actual mental health. 

  And I thought that’s ridiculous. How can you do that? I wanted a program that had more mental health, or I was going to do an additional year, but I had decided to do the year of psychiatry or mental health after I did my three years of family practice, that was what I had wanted to do. But the programs that I had looked at, the ones that I liked best, was the ones in California, one in Santa Monica, one in Santa Rosa, those were my top two. I had also looked at there was one at a hospital in Cincinnati, Daytona, one of those, some place in Ohio, it wasn’t Columbus, one of the other places. 

  Might’ve been Columbus too. It was Catholic, and of course they didn’t do abortions, and I wanted some experience being able to do abortions, so I didn’t wanna go to these Catholic ones. So, it was time for that, and again, I wanted to do California. I went to during my last year of medical school out to Martin Luther King Hospital and did an elective in dermatology. And the follow up was that I did that on purpose ‘cause I wanted to be able to interview with over in Santa Monica for the family practice. And so, Martin Luther King had hosted me for that month over at the intern’s residence dorm, and I had to take a bus, and it was on my birthday too, over to Santa Monica for my interview. 

  Well, I’m from a small country town, I haven’t done too much traveling, a little bit, but not that much at that point in time. I had allowed myself an hour travel time to get from basically what would be Compton over to Santa Monica thinking there is no way in the world that a bus ride across town can be more than an hour, right? 
   
  Dr. Necochea: Oh, no.

  Dr. Manley: Yes. 
   
  Dr. Necochea: Shoot, you didn’t make it?

  Dr. Manley: I made it over there, but not at the time the interview was scheduled, I was over an hour late. 
   
  Dr. Necochea: Shoot. 

  Dr. Manley: And it was a holiday too, ‘cause I think it was Columbus Day that day too. 
   
  Dr. Necochea: Happy Birthday.

  Dr. Manley: And maybe all the buses weren’t running. ‘Cause it was pretty warm that October too, I remember the dress I wore and everything, I had put on my little makeup, and stuff, and got over there. By the time I road two hours on those buses, and I think I had transfers too, my makeup was running, but I got there, I made it over there. And they were so disappointed, we had no cell phones then, so I don’t think I called. But they were so disappointed because they were excited, and they felt like that I would’ve been a good fit. And so, they said, “Let’s just do this.” And even though they said they wanted me to come back and try it again, the only thing was that my month was up, and I had to come back. 

  So, that meant that I had to fly all the way back to LA, and I am a very broke medical student. So, anyway, then that gets into my ex-husband, who promised me that he was going to drive me across the country so that I could interview in Santa Monica. There were three places, and I can’t remember where the other one was. I know it was Santa Rosa, Santa Monica, and there was one other spot there, but I can’t remember it. And he waited ‘cause he was still mad at me for leaving him at the end of my second year. And I just found out from him earlier this year that this man as long as I’ve known him, since we started dating my last year of college, so we got married right after college ended, he’s afraid of flying. 

  And he did not want me to go to California, that part I knew, but I didn’t realize, he’d never shared with me, that he was afraid of flying. And he knew he wasn’t gonna go with me to California, we were already separated, but we hadn’t totally abandoned the marriage at that point. He waited though, he sabotaged me, so I couldn’t go for my interview out in California because I could not afford to fly out there. And so, during the match, I didn’t match, and my counselor had told me that I wasn’t gonna match when we reviewed the situation. He told me even before, “You’re not gonna match.” 

  So, I didn’t. So, then it comes what would I do for residency? Well, what happened, I was offered a family practice at Detroit, and it turns out that I had an interesting experience on psychiatry in medical school. Dr. Lipton had been the department chairman, but he had resigned, I think. And so they had, what’s his name? It started with an H, I can’t remember his name. So, he was acting chief of psychiatry, I can’t remember his name now, I’m just totally blocking on it.  It was supposed to be a regular rotation, but I ended up having to assume the position of the acting intern because the intern at the time on service when I was there had gotten bit by a dog. 

  And then, he’d taken an anti-rabies shot, and he’d gotten very sick, he had a terrible reaction to the shot, and he was not able to work. And they needed an intern to cover the service, so half of my supposedly medical students, I ended up performing an acting internship.
   
  Dr. Necochea: In site?

  Dr. Manley: Yeah. So, they were very pleased with my work but at the end of the service when they have to do the evaluation, actually it wasn’t there, it was the rounds one day. I forget the name of the professor, but he was in there, and he was going on about the psyche, and the unconscious. And I was in a playful mood that day, and he had made some statement about the unconscious mind, and I got up, and I said to him, “There is no such thing.” He almost hit the ceiling.
   
  Dr. Necochea: Oh my God.

  Dr. Manley: He almost hit the ceiling, he was like, “What?” 
   
  Dr. Necochea: That’s funny.

  Dr. Manley: They were going to give me a 4.0 for the group, but after that this guy couldn’t quiet down. So, anyway, they did an interesting evaluation, I mean, overall, it was a good evaluation. So, I had asked them if they would give me a reference ‘cause we had to get references, I can’t remember that. This is what they told me, he said, “Yeah. We’ll give you a reference.” You know what he told me he was gonna put on the reference that I was gonna apply for family practice? They were gonna put on the reference that, “Yeah, she was a good student, but we don’t feel like she’s living up to her potential. 

  We think she shouldn’t go into psychiatry.” That’s what he told me he was gonna put on my reference. I said, “No, I don’t think that’ll work.” Anyway, this guy and his name I’ve totally blocked him out, it starts with an H, we had a chat after ‘cause I was thinking that, “Okay. Maybe what I should do is I should do my year of psychiatry first before and then go to family practice.” And so, I said, “Maybe that’d be easier if I did that.” But he got really excited about that, and he told me that, “Yeah.” And he knew for a fact that I could get in at LA County UNC because he and Chairman Woods, who was then the department chairman of psychiatry at UNC, were good buddies, and that would not be a problem. 

  And of course, that’s what he did. There were there were three places that I got accepted. I got accepted in Ohio at the Catholic hospital, and then I got accepted at Detroit. What was it? Yeah, at Wayne.
   
  Dr. Necochea: Wayne State. Yeah.

  Dr. Manley: Yeah. At Wayne State, I got accepted there, Ohio, and LA. And I had to choose which one to go to do just the final so that we could finalize everything. And I couldn’t make up my mind which one I wanted to go to, so this is what I did, I went to the airport in Raleigh, I went up to the counter, and I asked the guy at the airport. I said, “I need a flight to Columbus, Detroit, or LA” and basically, “When do you have a plane going to either one of those three cities?” He said, “We have a plane leaving for LA in 15 minutes, do you want a ticket?” 
   
  Dr. Necochea: That’s how you chose?

  Dr. Manley: That’s how I chose. 
   
  Dr. Necochea: And it was for psychiatry, right?

  Dr. Manley: Yes. LA was psychiatry. 
   
  Dr. Necochea: Wow. I hope you enjoyed the choice. Right?

  Dr. Manley: Well, what I did was I went to LA, that was the actually the best choice I could’ve made, it really was, actually, even if I had gone into family practice. But in terms of the experience that I had at LA County for psychiatry, I couldn’t have made a better choice. 
   
  Dr. Necochea: Wow.

  Dr. Manley: Yeah. But more importantly, I think, was living in the LA community because California was very business oriented, small business oriented at that particular time. And I ended up in a social group of people that I learned so much about life, people, relationships, businesses, how to run a business. They have very active communities there in terms of the Black, I was easily integrated into that group. At LA there was actually, at USC, there was one Black psychiatrist that was part-time on the faculty at that point, and his name was Lesley Morris, I’ll never forget him, which was good. 

  And they were making an effort, California has always been much more progressive on everything, so I’m glad I went. I had learned a whole lot, it was definitely the piece of experience that I needed, I wouldn’t have gotten that I think if I’d gone to any place else. And it wasn’t with a whole lot of trauma and so forth.
   
  Dr. Necochea: Yeah. That’s a plus considering your trajectory so far as a medical learner.

  Dr. Manley: ‘Cause I’m still interested in family practice, and I did apply, and I actually got accepted back at UNC to start family practice my second year. They were gonna give me full credit for the year that I did it in Los Angeles. And then, the last reason we’re in this was April of ’77, my youngest brother got killed in a car accident there, I was extremely close to him, very. 
   
  Dr. Necochea: I’m sorry to hear that.

  Dr. Manley: Thank you. I was devastated, absolutely devastated. Matter of fact, I was on call the night that he died in LA, the bed capacity in LA county at that point in time was 2,800 if all of the beds were being utilized. I mean, the med surge building by itself was 18 stories. An 18 story building, the 13th floor was a jail unit for the county of Los Angeles to treat their inmates, has it’s own elevator that went to that 13th floor for them where they were chained, and shackled to the bed, and all of that. We had five many emergency rooms for surgery, and five many emergency rooms for medicine, 10 in all. 

  The units, LA County had separate wards, like endocrinology had its own ward, a stroke unit at neurology had its own ward. They had their own floors, wards, areas for all of this at that point in time. But it was hard to get staff in, so when we were on call sometimes, we didn’t even have lab techs, and we basically sometimes didn’t have complimentary nurses, we’d do everything. I mean, it was an all-encompassing experience, and then when I did neurology, which was mandatory as part of the psych program, they had the main neurology there at LA County, but they also had the rehab, a place called Ranchos Los Amigos Hospital. 

  Which is known internationally where they have specialized units for all the different specialists, neurological problems. There was neurosurgery, and that one was a really tough unit for me after my brother got killed because my brother’s death was primarily related to a skull fracture at the base of the skull, ‘cause he was thrown out of the car. And I read his autopsy report, and that one was a very tough one because that neurosurgery unit was mostly young people from the accidental head injuries that they had suffered. But the stroke unit, there were several of them at Ranchos Los Amigos Hospital. 

  It was rare that you would see a frontal lobe stroke, mostly you’re gonna see temporal lobes, and so forth. But they had so many different types of strokes, and drones over there, and then they had the newer validating conditions, and so forth. They also had the chronic diseases like pulmonary, they had an iron lung, they had pacers in it at that time that would actually pump the iron lung. I saw so much, I mean, especially coming in from Mexico and some of these foreign countries. I saw amoeba abscesses on the brain when I was there, I actually saw a case of leprosy. Yeah. I mean, these are things that we had people from all over the world, that spoke all different languages, and it was not too much that I didn’t get to experience both in medicine as well as psychiatry during the time there. 

  But when Roger was killed, I was all set to return ‘cause it was already late April when he died, I was finishing up at the end of June, and I was supposed to have been headed back to Chapel Hill. But my colleagues didn’t want me to go, and I was so out of it, and in a pretty vulnerable time. Several of my colleagues came and said, “You shouldn’t leave, Gloria. You should stay.” They didn’t want me to go. I made the decision, now that was a decision I don’t know if I should’ve made or not made, but I just didn’t feel like I could go through anymore change at that point. I couldn’t see starting a new program and all of that at that point, I just didn’t have it. 

  So, I was comfortable there in Los Angeles where all those people. And then, I did another year of psychiatry, and then by that time of course I’d had the chance to come to terms with my stuff, and I stopped, and asked myself, “What the hell are you doing? Why didn’t you go to Chapel Hill? You’re still in psychiatry, you don’t wanna be in psychiatry.” And I said, “Oh well. I only have one more year left of residency.” Because that was also the last year, psychiatry became a mandatory four years after my class. My class was always the last for everything. But we were the last year, back in high school it was an option, you just opt to do the four years if you wanted it, or you could just do the three years, but it was the last year where the three years was an option. 

  The year after I started, psychiatry was a mandatory four-year residency program. 
   
  Dr. Necochea: Can I ask you one last thing, Dr. Manley?

  Dr. Manley: Just one more?
   
  Dr. Necochea: Yes. It’s just an overall take away sort of question, especially for students who might be hearing this. In your long experience, what has your experience taught you about the best ways in which we can support our present day minority students?

  Dr. Manley: I’m not sure. The Black community experience, I believe, is quite different now than what it was almost 50 years ago, it’s different.
   
  Dr. Necochea: Yes, totally.

  Dr. Manley: I mean, they’re coming from a different place. What I think is, and I look at my niece and nephew who are both now in their early 30s, there is a sense of disconnection. They’re still labeled as African Americans, but I don’t think that the average person now really knows what that is anymore. So, one of the things that I have found, ‘cause I spent quite a bit of time on the west both in California and Arizona, this became very evident when I went and worked at both the hospital and clinic setting in Bakersfield, California, and I would run into Black people there, and they were lost. 

  They had no sense of identity at all because they had no root connection unlike the Black people on the east coast, which is where slavery began, and I guess they had some in Texas. But the slavery in Texas and places like that was different than what it was on the east coast I think in a sense, because the people of Texas were so cut off from the majority of the Black people who were still on the east coast. And so, on the east coast there was like the community that I grew up with even though the White and Black people, there was a close association. But still, everybody had a clear concept of their identity, everybody. 

  And we had the history as I told you, it went all the way back. I mean, I can take you back to the 1700s in my family and talk extensively about life there. So, there was the identity of the personage because, I mean, people that are trying to identify themselves as the African Americans, but you’ve got to identify yourself as a person. Truly when the statement is made, they say you’re a Black person, and then you say, “No, I’m a person who is Black.” That’s sad, but I don’t think it’s fully understood ‘cause I think too many people actually do try to identify themselves as the Black person. Well, you’re gonna have a tough time with that. Who the hell knows what that is anymore? 
   
  Dr. Necochea: Right. Dr. Manley, this has been delightful. I’ve really enjoyed speaking with you and learning so much about your career. And good luck with the book, I hope we can stay in touch, I would love to know what happens to your book and its possible publication.

  Dr. Manley: Well, I’ve got a publisher already, he keeps sending me notices about why don’t I send it. It’s actually almost in the final phase. I started this book over 30 years ago.
   
  Dr. Necochea: Wow. 

  Dr. Manley: I’m gonna do it. I kept saying I was gonna finish it when I retired, and I still haven’t done it, but I’m going to. 
   
  Dr. Necochea: Well, I’d like to stay in touch about that one in particular. Well, let me stop the recording first. 

  [End of Audio]

  Duration: 130 minutes

   

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About

Dr. Gloria Manley is a first-generation physician who was born in a small town in rural northeastern North Carolina. She grew up with her father, mother, older sister, and two younger brothers. They were connected to an agricultural community that was extremely independent and tight-knit. Dr. Manley was a part of the last cohort of students to attended segregated schools for her K-12 education. Dr. Manley was given the choice of either attending a predominately White or predominately Black high school. Her strong ties to her community led to her decision to choose the latter. She noted that she had very good faculty, guidance counselors, and principals to help improve access to opportunities. She found a lot of success in high school and graduated valedictorian of her class before matriculating at Hampton University. During her first years of undergrad, she was interested in veterinarian medicine and pursued biological sciences because they provided her with an academic challenge. Dr. Manley received a scholarship to attend a summer development medical program. Her advisor encouraged her to apply to the top medical schools in the nation, where she received multiple acceptances. She attended UNC Chapel Hill for her medical school education. Dr. Manley was encouraged by UNC’s progressive pass-fail system, which was implemented in the hopes of alleviating medical students’ stress and combating medical student suicide rates. She experienced racial discrimination multiple times throughout medical school during orientation, in class lectures, and in labs. She spoke up on numerous cases to combat discrimination. She believes that her time at Hampton, an HBCU, contributed to her ability to use her voice and refuse to be bullied. While in school she created connections to fellow students as well as faculty in psychiatry, ENT, and Microbiology. She decided to pursue her interest in family medicine and psychiatry based on her childhood exposure to holistic medicine and natural treatments. Dr. Manley matched into psychiatry in Los Angeles county and reflects on this decision positively, in part because of how easily she felt she fit with the group. Even though Dr. Manley only intended on doing psychiatry for only one year, before moving back to family practice at UNC, she ultimately decided to stay in LA County and focus on her psychiatry residency. In reflecting through her experiences, Dr. Manley admits that the Black community experience is very different today than what it is today, and while her identity is strongly rooted in being African American, she isn’t quite sure if that is still the case for this generation of the community.