A Diagnosis of Bias: The Impact of White Supremacy on the Healthcare of James Brazier

| By Erika Burgess |

Dr. Charles McCuin Ward arrived in the small town of Dawson, Georgia, in 1955 as a young, single man, only three years out of the Medical College of Georgia. A native of Calhoun County, Georgia, Dr. Ward left his position as a flight surgeon in the U.S. Navy to open a private family practice with Dr. Walter Martin in Dawson.^[1]Despite being a newcomer in the county, Dr. Ward quickly assumed respectable positions within the hospital and community.^[2] In 1958, three years after Ward’s arrival in Dawson, the doctor involved himself in a more disturbing and racially biased side of the local culture when he was called to attend to James Brazier, a young black man who had been beaten by Dawson police.

Employed by the Terrell County Hospital to examine prisoners in the Terrell County Jail whenever necessary, Ward received a call from Officer Weyman B. Cherry on the evening of April 20, 1958, summoning him to the jail to examine the inmate Brazier, who Cherry and McDonald had beaten over the head earlier that day while arresting him.^[3] Ward failed to diagnose Brazier’s cranial injuries during this initial examination, instead attributing Brazier’s symptoms to alcohol intoxication.^[4] Ward never asked about the exact circumstances surrounding Brazier’s injuries, later stating, “I never ask such questions. I had rather not know.”^[5] Later that night when he returned to the jail, Dr. Ward again declared that there was “nothing unusual” about Brazier’s state, even after the Dawson police had taken Brazier from his cell in the middle of the night and beaten him a second time.^[6] The doctor acknowledged the severity of Brazier’s injuries only when Brazier was brought to the Terrell County Hospital in a comatose state on the morning of April 21. X-rays revealed a possible skull fracture, but Ward never confirmed this with an additional physical examination of Brazier’s skull. Instead, Ward referred Brazier to Columbus City Hospital for cranial surgery. But by this time, it was too late. Brazier died after undergoing a craniectomy^[7] on April 25, four days later. ^[8]

Ward’s misdiagnoses and delayed medical care for James Brazier echoed the racial biases and feelings of white supremacy prevalent in the town, including within the Dawson Police Department, in 1958. The same negative sentiments against black citizens that led white Dawson police officers to assault James Brazier also greatly influenced the medical treatment of the resulting bodily injuries. Dr. Ward’s seeming disregard for Brazier’s needs was also typical of the white medical establishment’s attitude towards black patients and black health during the Jim Crow era in the American South. From large-scale medical institutions to small town family practitioners, healthcare was replete with racial misconceptions and prejudice. This bias affected all aspects of black healthcare, from the practice of medicine by black professionals to the morbidity and mortality within the black community.^[9]

Medical misconceptions about blacks may have played a role in Ward’s failure to provide swift treatment for James Brazier. Medical professionals and patients alike were influenced by longstanding myths that blacks grossly differed from whites in physical and mental characteristics and susceptibility to disease. “The physician’s private sphere [of beliefs about racial differences] takes the form of an oral tradition that conveys racial folkloric beliefs from one generation to the next,”^[10] historian John Hoberman has written. Dr. Ward would have been exposed to such medical myths surrounding black patients when coming into contact with white citizens and physicians of Dawson, where a majority of the population was black^[11] and sentiments of white supremacy ran strong.^[12] One diagnosis that was applied differently to whites and blacks was alcoholism. Psychosis from alcohol consumption was reported at much higher rates nationally among blacks than whites in the mid-twentieth century. It is unclear, however, whether these reports reflect repeated misdiagnoses of alcoholism, as was the case with Ward’s initial diagnosis of James Brazier, or whether alcoholism was truly higher among blacks than among whites, possibly due to poverty, stress, and the constant threat of discrimination faced by blacks.^[13] Dr. Ward’s partner in practice, Dr. Walter Martin, colorfully rendered his own interpretation of Brazier’s symptoms when the twice-beaten Brazier was brought, unconscious, to the Terrell County Hospital on the morning of April 21, after being in police custody for more than 12 hours. Sitting on the hospital steps and looking into the Brazier’s car, where James Brazier was laying across the back seat, Martin remarked to Brazier’s wife, Hattie Bell Brazier, “Ain’t nothing ailing him, nigger… There ain’t nothing ail the damn nigger but drunk.”^[14]

The Braziers likely had no other option than to obtain treatment from Dawson’s white physicians, such as the unconcerned and even hostile Drs. Ward and Martin. Black doctors were uncommon nationally, even more rare in Georgia, and virtually non-existent in rural parts of the state. The 1960 U.S. Census that captured the demographics of 1958 showed there were only 83 black physicians in Georgia in 1960, compared to 3,337 white physicians, or about 2.7 percent.^[15] Most black physicians worked in large cities where more job opportunities existed for black professionals; they were very likely absent in the small, rural southern town of Dawson. Becoming a black doctor in the age of Jim Crow was not easy. Medical colleges in the South often banned black students. Even when a potential black physician did obtain graduate training, finding residencies and medical careers following graduation posed additional challenges. Most medical facilities in the South employed white physicians to attend to both white and black patients, but “colored wings” were often separated from, and in poorer condition than, those of whites. White physicians sometimes refused to treat black patients altogether. Both blacks and whites doubted the abilities of established black doctors, who most often treated impoverished patients who could not afford treatment at prestigious white facilities.^{[16] [17]}

It is unclear why Dr. Ward misdiagnosed and delayed treatment for Brazier’s skull fracture. It is possible that Ward, influenced by racially biased white citizens of Dawson and even his business partner, held his own racist ideas about black patients and did not wish to treat them adequately. Ward was a prominent figure in Dawson, even only after three years of residence, and had connections to the police department through the examination of prisoners. He even knew Sheriff Z.T. Mathews of Terrell County, who ran the county jail from which Brazier was taken and beaten, as “Old Buddy.”^[18] Thus, it is possible that Ward feared a loss of city connections, loss of his job, or even retribution by the police officers who beat Brazier if he had correctly diagnosed Brazier’s severe skull fracture. An anonymous letter about police violence against blacks in Dawson to Charles Diggs, a black congressman from Detroit, suggested that Ward was covering up for police during his misdiagnosis. The letter, dated about a month after Brazier’s death, claimed Ward had stated that he was tired of lying for police and would gladly testify against them if called to do so.^[19] Though the truth of this letter is uncertain, it strongly suggests that Ward had become caught up in the white supremacist politics of Dawson, resulting in inadequate medical care for Brazier, which ultimately led to his death. Ward’s disregard of James Brazier’s critical condition was emblematic of the racist ideas within Dawson and throughout the institution of medicine during the era of segregation. Such medical neglect was just as deadly to the black community as beatings by white police.

Edited by Kate Tuttle and Hank Klibanoff