We invite you to come fly with us, take a taxi, ride a 4-wheeler, then switch to horseback until we must walk afoot, then scale that final mountain to get a better look. We want you to meet the pioneering African American professionals who united into one organization every legally registered and licensed physician, dentist and pharmacist in the state of Arkansas.

The Arkansas Medical, Dental and Pharmaceutical Association, Inc. (AMDPA) was organized in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1893 to provide quality health care services, leadership, elevate the standards of education, promote friendly intercourse among its members and to protect them against the imposition of the times. The organization was also formed to enlighten and direct public opinion in the prevention of disease, care of diseases and prolongation of life.

On the mountaintop, we get our first glance of those heroic ones. Those physicians were Drs. George M. Anderson, William H. Sims, John R. Rowland, Joseph G. Thompson, R. G. Banks, Mitchell Blackout, Warren E. Bruce, D. E. Coldwell, Peter Clark, James Webb Curtis, George W. Hayman, John W. O. Marquess, George McNiece, Larry Wade and David Walt. There was also a Dentist, Dr. James H. Smith, who began practice in 1878 in Little Rock, Arkansas, and a Meharry Pharmacy graduate, Dr. Frank B. Coffin, who began practice in 1893.

Other early physicians were Drs. Howard W. Suggs, Lewis E. Duncan, Hugh L. Steele, John Stringer, Arthur Lewis, J. E. Swayze and Henry Moore. Dr. Bufford Gaines was a Minister at Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in 1893 and wrote a book entitled, "Racial Possibilities as Indicated by the Negroes in Arkansas". The new century started with the following Doctors in 1901: S. W. Harrison, Scott Mitcham, Madison McBeth, Wiley J. Reed, N. B. Houser, D. L. Clark, J. E. Dingwall, R. J. Meaddough, Abraham I. Davies, Samuel Huff, E. A. Kendall, C. A. Smith and J. G. Thornton. Shortly thereafter in 1903, came along Drs. Samuel Coleman and Robert Lee Sherman Tweed. Notable among this group was Dr. Susie Dillworth Hickmon, the state's first African American female physician who was a Meharry graduate specializing in diseases of women and children in Little Rock, Arkansas. She was married to John Otis Hickmon, M.D., Chief Surgeon and Secretary-Treasurer of Alpha Sanatorium in Little Rock, Arkansas.

The AMDPA held three-day annual statewide conventions in June of each year by member invitation consisting of scientific sessions, business meetings, smokers and garden parties. There were also public meetings involving people in various communities. Members presented prepared scientific papers for the group. At that time, the housing committee secured homes for out-of-town members because no public facilities were available to them. We also found during those early years Physicians Z. M. Mazique, Jon A. White, Nathaniel Harthorne Lockhart and a Dentist, Dr. Frank Goodwin, as well as Pharmacist Dr. W. O. Foster of the Foster Drug Company located on Main Street in Little Rock, Arkansas.

We can now see standing tall, Dr. John M. Robinson who was President and Founder of the Alpha Sanatorium, a graduate of the Chicago College of Ophthalmology with his practice limited to eye, ear, nose and throat surgery. Dr. Robinson founded the Pulaski County Medical, Dental and Pharmaceutical Association in 1905 with monthly meetings comprised of assigned scientific topics to members for presentation, business matters, fraternization and refreshments.

Coming closer to our position in history, we can now see Physicians J. H. Barabin, E. B. Bosell, C. N. Lewis, Alfred W. Womack, Hugh L. Steele, R. B. Surratt, Oliver Macklin Banks, Harold H. Phipps, Sr., J. G. Shaw and George William Stanley Ish. Standing along with them were Dentists, Frederick Lytes, David Johnson, George Martin, John Parker and Charles E. Miller.

As we look among this group of distinguished ones, let's focus our attention on Dr. G. William Stanley Ish who was born October 28, 1893, to Jefferson Gatherford Ish, a principal, and Marietta Kidd Ish, a teacher, at 1600 Scott Street in Little Rock, Arkansas. He was born in an American Queen Ann style home with quite a bit of surrounding property. Stanley grew up with sister Harriet and brother Jeff in this two-storied white frame house built in 1880 (listed 1978, in the National Register of Historic Places). Inside were two parlors, a formal dining room all with open fireplaces, a separate kitchen, back porch with a well and three bedrooms upstairs. All rooms had Victorian style furniture and a grand piano was in the formal parlor. Outside, the wide porch offered shade and relaxation. The children played under a huge grape arbor and drove the cows to pasture. They lived near the edge of the city.

As we turn our view, we can now see Dentists Randall Thomas Johnson, Henry A. Powell, W. S. Stevens, James Lee Swift, J. V. Jordan and Herbert H. Stilson. Gathered around them are Physicians G. A. Ellis, J. B. Bryant, Warren Brunson, Henry W. Douglas, J. D. Connor and S. A. Currie.

Arkansas faced migration, war years, inflation, unemployment, depression and segregation. The AMDPA moved forward with Physicians L. Routen, who practiced successfully for over 50 years. He operated a hospital and later a nursing home. Hugh A. Brown interned at Kansas City General II with a special service in TB treatment and became Director of McRae Memorial Sanatorium in Alexander, Arkansas. Dr. Brown met the challenger engineering the growth of McRae Sanatorium. He was an active guiding force in the AMDPA's scientific programs and fund-raising. He created leather and woodcraft (built a cedar bedroom furniture set) and was famous for little black cocker spaniels. He was responsible for inviting his roommate, our most senior AMDPA member, Oba B. White, M.D., (1933 Meharry graduate, retired 1992) to the Land of Opportunity. These rugged times also engulfed physicians J. B. Woods, Dan Lewis and R. C. Lewis whose father practiced in Hope, Arkansas.

Saving the teeth in Arkansas was a reality when in 1924, 33 Dentists passed the Arkansas Board of Dentistry including Granville R. Lewis, John E. Brooks, John Emerson Burke, Thomas Cubestine, Courtland G. Terrell, Charles Delbert Nicholson, Theo Howard Keith, Needham Roberts, William Hughes, Clarence Bell Rainey and our recently departed Howard graduate Hosea Medley Proffitt.

Dr. Proffitt, statuesque, articulate, and dressed like a man of distinction, practiced dentistry as a scientific art and became an active AMDPA member serving as President in 1952. He was an active office holding member of the National Dental Association and invited its convention to Arkansas in 1957, the very first time it met in a hotel. This meeting convened at the black-owned and operated National Baptist Hotel in Hot Springs, Arkansas. There, he was elected National Dental Association Vice President and later became President in 1959.

Continuing to turn, we can appreciate Drs. George W. Hayman, Bruce Kelso Harrison, Reuben Edward Shivers and the first female Dentist in Arkansas, Hazel Marie Moore, D.S.S., 1930, Meharry graduate. She practiced in North Little Rock with Dr. Charles Nicholson, who heard even the women saying "I don't want her to pull my teeth". The slights, the insults were all there. There was Jackson W. Mathes, E. C. Carter, R. Ph., 1921, Meharry, who set the tone for the day with Gem Pharmacy. Don't miss Drs. H. H. Thornton of Hot Springs, S. F. Floyd in Little Rock and M. Young in Pine Bluff.

The AMDPA fought against the odds, you name it. On the horizon coming into our sights are Harry P. Browne, George F. Jackson, and Cleon A. Flowers, the father of a family of doctors in Pine Bluff, Arkansas and one always with a helping hand. There is also Dr. William Jacko Massie, a man of many places, an activist, a family man, a man to remember and a friend.

Let's focus our attention on the Era of Edith, 1948-1952. This is Edity Irby Jones, M.D., 1952, UAMS. She was the first African American graduate of the University of Arkansas Medical School having been accepted in 1948. This was duly noted by the news media as the first African American west of the Mississippi River to enter into an all white medical school. The AMDPA with its Edith Irby Jones Fund helped support her toward her medical degree and later elected her to an associate membership before she became a licensed physician. She was an active energetic member and was elected President of the organization in 1959. She even led to the elimination of the AMDPA stag parties.

Thurgood Marshall - Brown vs Board of Education - life went on but there was some difference. The AMDPA moved with the times but there was also an expressed need for the AMDPA. In 1954, Mrs. Aldophine Fletcher Terry, who was white, inquired at a Pulaski County Medical Society meeting why there were no Negroes in the Society and she was told that none had ever applied. This issue appeared in the daily papers. That very same day, Drs. John Robinson and Oba B. White applied for membership and were accepted with all the rights and privileges including hospital privileges.

The AMDPA Annual Conventions were held in June at the National Baptist Hotel in Hot Springs, Arkansas from 1954 through 1971. Morris A. Jackson, M.D., UAMS, was the second black graduate and first black male graduate to exit from the University of Arkansas Medical School. He served as president of the AMDPA, and has subsequently served on the Philander Smith College Board in Little Rock, Arkansas and as a board member of the University of Arkansas, First National Bank and Arkansas Children's Hospital. The Pulaski County Medical, Dental and Pharmaceutical Association celebrated 50 years of service in 1955 among which were several members present such as U. S. Reed, Ruby Frank Bryant, who photographed and made motion pictures of all meetings he attended and Robert J. Smith, the first black surgeon specialist in the state of Arkansas. These members represented guiding forces in the AMDPA for year.

About 1959, teeth pulling using a display sign became popular promoting extractions at $2.00, preventive dental care and the use of x-rays in diagnosis. The concept of appointments came with 13 Meharry graduates including Drs. John H. Moore, David A. johnson, Paul Lawrence Dumas, and Harold H. (2H) Phipps, Jr. Granville R. Lewis, an organist and oil painter of news medical note, and Samuel O. Banks of the Meharry faculty were also included. There was Dr. Alexander M. Pratt, an inventor and author of "Your Children, Their Teeth and Their Health", who was also a board certified pedodontist. Among this group please also note Willie L. Molette, a prominent Dentist and currently an active AMDPA member who has served as President and who, for years, has served as Treasurer of the AMDPA. Incidental note should be made that his late son, Willie L. Molette, Jr., D.D.S., Meharry Medical School, Boston University in Periodontology, Meharry Faculty, spent a brief time in this state. Don't forget to see Dr. David Parker, a responsible AMDPA member and President in 1959.

Let us revisit with Dr. John M. Robinson who, about 1959, was founder and president of the Arkansas Negro Democratic Association. They were responsible for dismantling the "white primary system" restricting black voting power in Arkansas. This was done in conjunction with Sue Cowan Williams, a teacher, who filed a lawsuit attacking the differential pay scales providing higher salaries for white school teachers.

Look at more Meharry graduates answering to names such as King Henry Nunn, prominent Dentist and community activist in Blytheville, Arkansas. We see the husband/wife dental team of Garman P. Freeman and Evangeline Upshur. Dr. Freeman was a community activist, a man of chance, President of AMDPA 1969, 1971 and 1978. Dr. Evangeline Upshur can be seen boldly taking her state boards on portable equipment in the Marion Hotel Ballroom where she had no suction, had to come in the back door and eat in the kitchen separate from the other examinees. She did not even have knowledge of the celebration party of the new dentists and like many others at the time, had to endure the unheated exam room environment. As they were both active AMDPA members, they were warmly received by their peers. Dr. Upshur, in similar fashion to Dr. Hazel Marie Moore, experienced and endured the sexually biased attitudes predominantly from female patients. The AMDPA set another tone in history in 1956 by electing its first female President, Dr. Upshur, and a year later hosted the National Dental Association meeting in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

Looking further, we can see Leon Gant who served in the Army at Camp Chaffee for two years, L. E. O'Connor, who later practiced in Ft. Smith, Arkansas. Also, there is Richard Ceasor and W. C. Suttles. Ann Walker Carpenter, R.Ph., Kansas City, operated Walker's Pharmacy in Little Rock, Arkansas.

The opening of school in 1957 developed into the Little Rock crises involving Mrs. Daisy Bates and the Little Rock Nine who were known around the hworld. The AMDPA and the Pulaski County MDPA members secured NAACP life memberships becoming part of that history. Dr. Carl Edward Hyman returned to Meharry for a residency in OB-GYN becoming the AMDPA first Obstetric Gynecologist specialist. UAMS, in the ensuing years, produced more MD's such as Drs. Joycelyn Elders, Worthie Springer, William Childs, Raymond Miller, Joe Elliot Smith, and Pharmacist, Carl Brooks. In 1964, Garman P. Freeman, Dr. Jerry Jewell, and Evangeline Upshur became members of the CDDS, the ASDA, and the ADA all with the respective rights and privileges. Then came Drs. Roosevelt Brown (who later also became President of the National Dental Association), Clifton Roaf, Othello Miller, Jay Owens, Jr., Jon Dodson, Robert B. Lewis, Robert Dan Miller, and Ethelyn Williams Neal. Disbursed among this decade of individuals, we appreciate Pharmacists Albert Bryant, James Bagsby, James Douglas, Jimmie Jones and Larry Shine. Joining them are Pharmacists John Carter and Blanche Thornton.

The University of Arkansas Medical Sciences later received a face lift with the arrival of Mr. Bill Bauknight of Minority Affairs during the 1970's. We can now greet many new faces springing up as promising trees. Standing tall are Drs. Linda Hanie Green, Tommy Love, Ishmael Reid, Cleon Flowers, Jr., John Flowers, Martha Flowers and growning along with them are brothers Clifford Flowers and Randall Flowers. Robert Abraham, Harold Betton, Horace Johnson, Linda McDade Parker, Paul Smith, Anes Wiley Abraham, Annette Slater, Rufus Thrower, Wheirda Bentley and Sterling Roaf are there. The AMDPA held meetings at the resort areas statewide during this decade and, in 1975, met in Montego Bay, Jamaica with scientific sessions in a hospital in Kingston. The organization met in Mexico City at the Fiesta Palace in 1978 and enjoyed the experience of exciting bull fighting, forkalo ballet,and scientific sessions held at the medical school/hospital which merited news coverage in the Spanish newspaper.

The list of workers continues with Drs. Errol King, O. T. Gordon, Alonzo D. Williams, and Joe D. O'Neal. Other professionals listed among the ranks include Drs. James Campbell, Erma Washington, Joe Hargrove, Frances Harris, Charles Watson, Vye Watson, Roy Denton, Sheila Coleman, Carlton Newsome and Pharmacists Lenora Newsome, Charlie Wesley, Lynette Coleman, Catherine Donald, Deloris Razor and Eloise Douglas.

Entering the eighties, we find William L. Rutledge, Barbara Bozeman, Judy Riley, Lloyd McGriff, Theodore Lemle, Gail Reede Jones, Ernest Berry, Jr., Lester Alexander, Myron Townes, Leon Waddy, James Alexander, Marion Barr, Carl A. Hyman and Harry Andre Michel. AMDPA President, Joe D. O'Neal, was highlighted in Ebony Magazine in 1986.

More UAMS and other physicians rolled forth to include Simmie Armstrong, Lee Nayles, Delbra Caradine, Billy Wayne Evans, Derrick Lewis, Robin Phillips Jeffers, Carl Johnson, Archie Hearne, Henry Masters and Gary Nunn. Preventive dentistry was practiced by Lester Davis, James E. Wofford, Tomie McCall, Ricky Perry, Lula Lang, Eldin Jewell, Elmer Johnson, Mack Warren, O. T. Sykes, Robert Blackwell, Roger Jones, Dale Miller, Edward Sherril and Rosetta Shelby-Calvin.

If we backtrack our sights just a bit, let us salute the UAMS faculty members such as Phillip Rayford, Ph.D., Chairman, Department of Physiology & Biophysics, Robert Harrison, III, M.D., Chairman, Department of Endocrinology, William Lawson, M.D., Ph.D., Department of Psychiatry and Robert Lewis, M.D., Department of Rheumatology, for these have been supporting limbs of the AMDPA.

Over the decades of the 1970's, 1980's and early 1990's we noticed more interaction of our members in decision-making bodies of the state. Dr. Raymond P. Miller, Dr. M. A. Jackson and Dr. Joe Hargrove have sequentially served on the Board of Trustees of the University of Arkansas. Former Governor Bill Clinton appointed Dr. Alonzo Williams to the Arkansas State Medical Board and Dr. Willie Molette to the Arkansas State Dental Board in 1986. Dr. Lenora Newsome was appointed by him to the Arkansas State Pharmacy Board in 1991. These represented the first African Americans to hold these positions.

During our last 10-15 years journey we yet meet a faster growing population of health care professionals. We see Dr. James Arrington, Oboma Asemota, Yvette Baker, Reginald Barnes, Thomas Beasley, Phillip Bowden, Milton Brunson, D'orsay Bryant, Susan Calhoun, Linda Collina, Crit Cooksey, Dallas Craig, Jimmy Cunningham, Janet Curry, Greg Davis, william Dodson, Anthony Fletcher, Wrenda Gallien, and John Jackson, D.O., Manuel Kelley, Herschel Marcus, Filipe Masquil, Cortez McFarland, Kevin Means, Robert Miller, Freeman Montague, Alda Moore, Fred Newton, Sandra Nichols, Rose Pace, Clifton Orr, Ph.D., Felicia Sankey, L. T. Gates, Cleveland Rayford, Howard Rapheal, Robert Redd, Beatrice Reed, Billy Thomas, Twilla Twillie, Lee Walker, David Webber, D.O., Patricia Knott. Dentists are: Robert Blackwell David Brunson, Marvin Caudle, J. G. Hawkins, David Walker and Sam Wofford. Additional pharmacists include: Kim Byrd, Terri Payne, Belinda Pierce and Joseph Udeaja.

So as we complete our panoramic view atop this historic  mountain, we can see that the AMDPA has enjoyed a history of weighty  significance.  As we enter our Centennial Celebration, we have much to be proud of,having been involved in the community, political, social and scientific arenas of our state.  More historical details will be included in the recently published Ish House with its plans to depict the lifestyle  of the turn of the century and to display materials for teaching about this organization and its history.  Since one year ago when the AMDPA met on the Mardi Gras Carnival Cruise Ship to Nassau for its annual convention, plans have been made to bring us to this point whereby we might celebrate the  proud heritage we share as a group of devoted health care workers.  We pray that our last look will not be a downhill  one as we descent from this mountain view but instead a centennial look  into the future to greater heights.

The AMDPA has survived for 100 years and the service goes on.