Black History

First African-American Resident Physician at VUMC

THE TENNESSEE TRIBUNE — Harold Jordan, MD was the first African-American resident physician at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Published

8 years ago

March 8, 2019

Oakland Post

By Tribune Staff

Dr. Harold Willoughby Jordan is the second grandson of Dr. John Henry Jordan and was born in the house in Newnan that John built. Harold was raised there in the shadow of his grandfather. He spent his childhood playing with John’s old medical bag, surrounded by his medical books and lasting legacy. From a young age, it was Harold’s desire to become a doctor, and he knew his parents expected it of him.

Harold was educated in Newnan and finished high school there before relocating to Atlanta to attend Morehouse College. He graduated from Morehouse with a bachelor’s degree in Biology in 1958 and then followed in his grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s footsteps by enrolling as a student at Meharry Medical College. Harold graduated in 1962 and completed one year of a residency in internal medicine before deciding to pursue psychiatry instead. He was the first black medical resident on record at Vanderbilt University.

After completing his education, Harold became a faculty member at Meharry Medical College and served as Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry for 18 years as well as Acting Dean of the School of Medicine. He was loyal to Meharry and only left in the 1970’s to serve as the first black Commissioner of Mental Health for the State of Tennessee. A state building, the Harold W. Jordan Habilitation Center, is named in his honor.

February 8, 2019 marked the launch of the newest of the named lectures in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences – the Dr. Harold Jordan Diversity and Inclusion Lecture.

Harold Jordan, MD was the first African-American resident physician at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, completing a general psychiatry residency between 1964 and 1967. Dr. Jordan’s history with the Department of Psychiatry and Vanderbilt University School of Medicine was outlined in the article “Hidden Figure” from the Summer 2017 issue of Vanderbilt Medicine Magazine.

Harold Jordan, M.D., has had a distinguished medical career that includes many highlights, including being chair of Psychiatry at Meharry Medical College, his medical alma mater, and serving as acting dean of the School of Medicine at Meharry as well.

Besides his academic career, Jordan was devoted to improving mental health care for the public through governmental service. He was Assistant Commissioner for Psychiatric Services and, following that, Commissioner of Mental Health and Mental Retardation for the state of Tennessee, and performed those jobs with such distinction that the state named a building in his honor on the campus of Clover Bottom Developmental Center, the state facility for people with severe intellectual disabilities which closed in 2016.

But a lesser-known part of Jordan’s professional life is his role as a pioneer at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC). In 1964 he became the first African-American resident physician at VUMC.

It’s fair to say that he began that groundbreaking achievement with little fanfare, and it’s fair to say that the achievement has received little fanfare since.

Reached at his home in California, where he moved after retirement, Jordan recalled interviewing with William F. Orr Jr., M.D., who was chair of Psychiatry at Vanderbilt from 1947 to 1969.

“Dr. Lloyd Elam arranged for me to meet Dr. Orr,” he said. With bemused understatement, and the hint of a chuckle, he added, “Obviously, that was very good for me.”

Elam, who later served as President of Meharry, was on the Psychiatry faculty at that institution and recommended that Jordan, who had already done an internship year at Meharry in Internal Medicine, consider a slot at Vanderbilt because, at the time, Meharry did not offer a residency in Psychiatry.

The interview went well, and Orr offered Jordan one of the three residency slots in Psychiatry that year.

But, Jordan recalls, Orr did more than offer him a position.

“Dr. Orr was very encouraging, accepting and protective,” Jordan said, clearly recalling a time when not all institutions exhibited those attitudes toward African-Americans. “He made it clear that I would be accepted. I felt secure. I knew the path was clear for me.”

Jordan’s family roots in medicine are deep; both his great-grandfather and grandfather were physicians who trained at Meharry. When he was growing up in Newnan, Georgia, just south of Atlanta, he heard family tales of his medical forbears and was inspired to follow their footsteps.

“I had wanted to do that since I heard about them,” he said.

Despite the low-key nature with which Jordan’s residency was handled, the groundbreaking nature of what was going on would have been known to all of the participants.

Vanderbilt’s first African-American student, Joseph Johnson Jr., was admitted to the Divinity School in 1953, and in 1956 two black law students had been admitted as well. But despite the presence of a few black students on campus, at that time there were no African-American residents at Vanderbilt Hospital, and it would be two more years, 1966, before the Vanderbilt School of Medicine would admit its first African-American student, Levi Watkins Jr.

“He paved the way for everyone who came after him,” Churchwell said. “To be an African-American resident in a sea of white residents at a Southern medical institution, I would call him a true Robinson Crusoe.”

Just as Vanderbilt was changing in that era, so was the country. As it happened, the day after Jordan began his residency at VUMC, July 1, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, mandating an end to discrimination in public accommodations.

Jordan says the faculty and his fellow residents were encouraging and supportive—“My colleagues were fine—there were no problems in Psychiatry”—but the unusual sight for that time of an African-American physician at Vanderbilt sometimes made for awkward misunderstandings.

“I walked into the Emergency Room [for a consult] and somebody thought I was the janitor and said, ‘The trash is over there,’” he remembered.

From across the decades of an honored career in medicine, Jordan, who turned 80 this year, says he has no ill feeling about such slights. “I would laugh at them, like, ‘What are you talking about?’” he said.

After his three years of residency at VUMC, Jordan pursued his academic career at Meharry and his public service career with the State of Tennessee, but also maintained a clinical appointment on the faculty of the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine until 2016.

In a 1971 letter in support of Jordan’s faculty appointment at Vanderbilt, Robert M. Reed, M.D., a Psychiatry faculty member of that era, wrote that, since Jordan was the first black resident to train at Vanderbilt, “his original appointment and subsequent performance were watched and monitored by a great many people as constituting something of a ‘test case.’”

He adds, “If indeed it were a test, then Harold passed it with honors, in my opinion.”

Andre Churchwell, M.D., Chief Diversity Officer for Vanderbilt University Medical Center, senior associate dean for Diversity Affairs, and Levi Watkins Jr. M.D. Chair, professor of Medicine, Biomedical Engineering and Radiology and Radiological Sciences, said that Jordan’s contributions to VUMC are important to remember.

A 1967 Psychiatry departmental group photo makes Churchwell’s point. It shows 40 or so people lined up around the traditional entrance to the School of Medicine, and Jordan is indeed the only African-American in a sea of white faces.

Given the varieties of reactions to Jordan’s presence and his role at the Medical Center in the mid-1960s, Churchwell added, “The fact that he was studying psychiatry probably helped him.”

For his part, Jordan says his time at Vanderbilt was important to him, both personally and professionally.

“It was a very positive influence,” he said. “I just felt very supported at both Meharry and Vanderbilt. I felt blessed to have had that experience in Psychiatry.”

He is married to Geraldine Crawford Jordan, a Meharry Medical College nursing school graduate. Thy have four children: Harold, Vincent, Karen and Kristi, as well as four grandchildren.

This article originally appeared in The Tennessee Tribune.

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Listening as a Lifeline: A Doula’s Witness to Black Maternal Health

OAKLAND POST — Maternal mortality and pregnancy-related mortality use different time frames and methods and are not interchangeable. Finalized 2024 CDC data recorded 649 maternal deaths nationally. The overall rate was 17.9 deaths per 100,000 live births, but for non-Hispanic Black women it was 44.8, compared with 14.2 for White women and 12.1 for Hispanic women.

Published

3 days ago

October 4, 2026

Post News Group

By Antoinette Stewart-Eneh, Special to California Black Media Partners

Word Count: 1058

Note: Client A, B & C, names are withheld for privacy; these accounts reflect my recollections as their Doula.

Client A rocked her hips on a birthing ball, surrounded by pale wood and warm textiles in a softly lit Scandinavian-style office. I was her doula through a Southern California maternal health company combining nurse-led care, technology, and wraparound support.

She was a healthy Black woman in her thirties. Her baby girl was doing well; her partner took notes as we discussed labor and advocacy.

Then we turned to their chosen hospital. I knew it well—and remembered a phrase from another client’s experience: “Policy of Sovereignty.”

Client B had been told she needed a repeat cesarean as a precaution, though the reasoning was unclear. Her obstetrician, who performed her first cesarean two years earlier, had assured her throughout pregnancy that she was healthy, healed, and ready for a vaginal birth. We asked staff to review her chart, consult her obstetrician, and reconsider immediate surgery. Instead, they invoked the “Policy of Sovereignty.”

The physician on duty, we were told, had final authority, regardless of her established care plan. I asked whether an ultrasound or reassessing the baby’s position could offer clarity. Cesareans can be lifesaving. But were Client B’s history, informed consent, and circumstances guiding this decision—or was routine overriding individualized care? We kept asking for her obstetrician. Beneath every request was a deeper question: Was she being heard?

The Numbers Behind the Stories

Statistics arrive in clean columns. The experiences behind them do not.

Maternal mortality and pregnancy-related mortality use different time frames and methods and are not interchangeable. Finalized 2024 CDC data recorded 649 maternal deaths nationally. The overall rate was 17.9 deaths per 100,000 live births, but for non-Hispanic Black women it was 44.8, compared with 14.2 for White women and 12.1 for Hispanic women.

In California, Black birthing people experienced 56.5 pregnancy-related deaths per 100,000 live births during 2020–2022—3.8 times the White rate and four times the Asian rate.

As a doula serving Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties, I see faces behind those numbers. I remember concerns raised softly, then firmly, then desperately. I am tired of watching Black families enter spaces meant to protect them, only to discover they must defend themselves while laboring, bleeding, trembling, or recovering.

Returning to Client A

Client A’s labor stretched nearly 48 hours. As her condition worsened, she, her partner, and I asked whether a cesarean should happen sooner. A provider questioned my place as a doula, then said she was next.

Six more hours passed.

She entered surgery visibly ill with a serious uterine infection, her baby malpositioned and stuck. Her partner later recalled the provider saying, “This baby would never have made it through the birth canal.”

Those words landed like a blow. Our urgency had been treated as ignorance. With Client B, we questioned why surgery was inevitable. With Client A, why it was delayed. Doula advocacy is not about one kind of birth. It is about informed consent, individualized care, and timely action. Hospital routine should never outweigh the person carrying the risk.

Survival Cannot Be the Standard

The Black maternal health crisis includes unequal care, untreated conditions, racial bias, delayed referrals, poor communication, and inadequate postpartum support. It is about birth plans respected only until a hospital becomes less busy and postpartum care that asks whether a mother survived, not whether she has what she needs to recover.

Survival cannot be the standard. Technology can support care, but it cannot replace human connection. An algorithm cannot detect fear in a patient’s eyes, and a mission statement alone cannot ensure adequate staffing or culturally responsive care.

The Story of Client C

Before I arrived, I heard the chaos through Client C’s phone. Staff struggled to locate her baby’s heartbeat on an external monitor as her fear and blood pressure rose. I pleaded for an internal electrode before surgery.

“There’s not enough time,” a nurse said.

“I would like to wait for my doula,” Client C called out.

But she was medicated, hurried through consent, and wheeled away while I listened.

In the operating room, after a shift change, another nurse placed an internal electrode and said, “The previous monitor wasn’t working.”

No one responded.

According to her father, the obstetrician avoided eye contact: “We need to move forward.”

Surgery may still have been necessary; that was not mine to determine. But if faulty equipment helped create the emergency, the family deserved acknowledgment and explanation—not silence. No family should have to wonder whether major surgery followed an unavoidable crisis or a machine failure no one recognized in time.

From Prevention to Accountability

After supporting nearly 100 families, I have learned that danger often begins before admission. I have urged clients to seek care—and heard why they feared returning: dismissed pain, harsh words, shame for asking questions.

Care cannot be holistic where Black families do not feel safe enough to speak or return. Representation matters, but providers of color cannot repair inequity alone. They need adequate staffing, mentorship, culturally responsive training, reliable equipment, and colleagues that are reflective of all the aforementioned. It’s not the Black providers job to care for just the Black patients, everyone should have the same goal.

The Momnibus Act, California’s Medi-Cal doula benefit, the Transforming Maternal Health Model and the Perinatal Equity Initiative require more than promises; they need sustained funding, reliable reimbursement and accountable implementation.

Birth should be sacred. Yet too many Black birthing people arrive carrying the burden of proving their pain is real. A doula can listen, educate, comfort, and advocate—but cannot repair a system that refuses to listen. The true measure of progress is what happens when a Black birthing person says, “Something is wrong.”

Are they believed? When equipment fails, is that failure acknowledged? Do families leave not merely alive, but safe, respected, supported, and whole?

Until those answers are consistently yes, California’s maternal health success story remains unfinished.

About the Author

Antoinette Stewart-Eneh is a mother of two, holistic maternal wellness advocate, and birth and postpartum doula who has supported families since 2019. She serves as program operations coordinator for Frontline Doulas, a volunteer client coordinator with the Joy in Birthing Foundation and a childbirth educator in South Los Angeles. She is studying to become a midwife and lactation educator.

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Oakland Post: Week of September 30 – October 6, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of September 30 – October 6, 2026

Published

3 days ago

October 4, 2026

Oakland Post

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Black History

IN MEMORIAM: The Rev. Leon “Sonny” Clark, Longtime Orange County Pastor and Community Leader, Dies at 72

Rev. Leon William “Sonny” Clark, the longtime pastor of New Spirit Baptist Church in Santa Ana and a prominent faith and community leader in Orange County, passed away on September 9 at the age of 72. Born in Bennettsville, South Carolina, Clark was a U.S. Navy veteran who dedicated his life to service. He served various Southern California churches before leading New Spirit Baptist Church for over 22 years, extending his work into counseling, mentoring, and civic engagement, and supporting the African American community. To learn more about his life and contributions, read more.

Published

1 week ago

September 28, 2026

Post News Group

The Rev. Leon “Sonny” Clark. File photo.

By Bo Tefu, California Black Media

Rev. Leon William “Sonny” Clark, longtime pastor of New Spirit Baptist Church in Santa Ana and a respected faith and community leader in Orange County, died Sept. 9. He was 72.

Born Oct. 2, 1953, in Bennettsville, South Carolina, Clark was a U.S. Navy veteran who later built a life of service centered on family, faith, ministry, and community.

Clark began his formal ministry at Metropolitan Baptist Church in Altadena in 1978. After acknowledging his call to ministry in 1980, he preached his first sermon and went on to serve churches throughout Southern California, including Second Baptist Church in Riverside, Mount Vernon Baptist Church in Rubidoux, Antioch Missionary Baptist Church in Pomona, and Friendship Baptist Church in Yorba Linda.

In November 2003, Clark was called to lead New Spirit Baptist Church in Santa Ana, where he served as pastor for more than 22 years. His work extended beyond the pulpit through counseling, mentoring, civic engagement, and efforts to strengthen Orange County’s African American community.

Clark served on the Orange County Heritage Council and supported efforts to preserve and celebrate African American history and culture. He helped organize the Orange County Black History Parade and Unity Festival, served on the Interfaith Committee and the Orange County Transit Authority, and served as president of the Orange County Ministers Conference.

In 2024, the City of Santa Ana recognized Clark for his contributions to the community. He also received the Orange County Southern Baptist Association Hall of Faith Award and was previously honored as Pastor of the Year by the Orange County Heritage Council.

Clark is survived by his wife, Andrea Joyles Clark; six children, Shawn Williams, Le Ondra Clark Harvey, Kyla Coward, Joshua Clark, Marissa Clark and Ashley Clark; grandchildren and great-grandchildren; siblings; extended family; and the New Spirit Baptist Church congregation.

A wake will be held Thursday, Oct. 1, from 4 to 8 p.m. at New Spirit Baptist Church, 701 S. Sullivan St. in Santa Ana, with a remembrance service from 5 to 6:30 p.m.

A Celebration of Life will be held Friday, Oct. 2, at Friendship Baptist Church, 17145 Bastanchury Road in Yorba Linda. Viewing begins at noon, followed by the service at 1 p.m.

Burial will take place Monday, Oct. 5, at 10:15 a.m. at Riverside National Cemetery.

Clark often shared a guiding principle that shaped his ministry: “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”