She has walked out on a miscreant neurosurgeon…and she has walked into the main building at Vassar—locked it—and occupied it for four days. Dr. Claudia Thomas, the first black female orthopedic surgeon in the United States, has no shortage of backbone.
Winner of the 2008 Diversity Award from the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS), Dr. Thomas has an exemplary life story that will stand for years as a beacon to younger surgeons of all backgrounds. She has literally changed the course of history—and the course of lives—for thousands.
The importance of her close-knit family, says Dr. Thomas, cannot be overstated. “I was raised in an intact family, something that is critically important for the full development of a child. My sister and I had highly devoted parents who made it a nonnegotiable that we do well academically. One day in fourth grade I came home with a 99 on a math test. While my mom responded with, ‘That’s good, baby’ my daddy said, ‘What happened to the other point?’ I quickly learned to do even better in math.”
A math major at Vassar College, Claudia Thomas soon learned to call upon the strength of her upbringing to take on another major…advocacy.
“On the academic front, I thrived on geometry, but I was most definitely bored by the theory—and I could see that I didn’t want to spend my days teaching or theorizing. It was in my junior year that I decided to move forward with a career in medicine. As I progressed through school, and ‘found myself, ’ I switched my major to black studies and did my thesis on sickle cell anemia.”
As Claudia Thomas evolved, so did her interest in her heritage. Society, however, would only evolve with a push. “In high school I was taunted by black kids for being overly studious. I came to college ready to assimilate—and at first only associated with white students.”
I discovered my identity, however, in 1968 when Martin Luther King was assassinated. This event pierced me to my core; when I looked around at the faces of my white peers, however, I saw a marked lack of emotion. A year later I was president of the Students’ Afro-American Society.
“Our organization approached Vassar’s administration and requested that they initiate a degree-granting black studies program, along with eight other demands. The president at the time dismissed our demands as absurd, so we demonstrated and marched; we also painted a pig on a pillow case (one that resembled said president), and burned the pig in effigy. We’d given the administration a deadline to start a black studies program and when they failed to meet it, 34 of us—all women—decided to seize the main building of the college. At 3am we took lumber, hoses, and other supplies, and locked ourselves in. For four days we risked expulsion, not knowing that the sheriff was organizing a posse to remove us by force. We later learned that the faculty had prevented such action, and that Governor Rockefeller had ordered that no one enter the building.”
The Vassar Main Building takeover was one of the seminal events in the civil rights movement. Prior to the takeover of Vassar’s administration center the only comparable protest was one initiated by black male students at Cornell. This was a takeover by women, the so-called “fairer sex.” It created a shock wave among the seven sister schools of the ivy league (Vassar, Mount Holyoke, Wellesley, Smith, Bryn Mawr, Radcliffe and Barnard College) as well as headlines around the U.S. In the history of African American studies, this particular act by these very young women in 1968 is now considered to be one of the seminal events that launched African American studies programs around the country.
But getting from here to there was an incredible story.
At the end of their occupation, barricaded in the building with no fresh laundry or other facilities yet with victory in their grasp, the women did something extraordinary. “With brooms, mops and rags from a utility closet, we scoured the area that had been our residence for the previous three days. We removed the barricades. We checked the floors and walls, and even scrutinized the corners, to make sure everything was left in even better condition than we had found it. Our final task was to extract the nails from Main’s front doors. We pried the nails free and removed the planks, liberating the cherry. The tremendous doors whined as they pivoted on their axes, and the sun’s radiance burst through. Those of us in front shielded our eyes. Once adapted to the brilliance of the outdoors, 34 weary women marched, heads held high, through the wooden portal to the ovation of on-lookers. We left behind an arrangement of daisies on the switchboard operator’s desk, standing tall in a Coca-Cola bottle. For me, I left more than a clean, well-swept area, and a bottle with flowers in it. I left behind 19 months of anger.” The program that Dr. Thomas and the other women started is today known as Vassar’s Africana Studies program and it celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2008.
During those days of protest and change, Claudia Thomas thought often of her mother, an activist herself. “The trustees of the college reviewed—and granted—our demands.”
From this incredible experience I learned that once you have sacrificed everything for something you believe in, then everything else seems trivial. My mom’s response was in contrast to those of the other parents (none of whom knew about our plans). She said, ‘Anybody worth their salt has been arrested for civil disobedience.’
Thus it was a determined and tested Claudia Thomas who stepped into the halls of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1971…and she would need her hard-won chutzpah. “This was my first exposure to overt racism, and it was shocking. Residents commonly referred to elderly black women as ‘girl’ and to elderly black men as ‘boy.’ When I spoke out people were taken aback. The racism was institutionalized in many ways, meaning that black patients were often left out of novel, lifesaving procedures. Another time I protested had little to do with race and everything to do with bad behavior and, likely, sexist attitudes. I was operating with a neurosurgeon who had a habit of cursing at the scrub nurse every day…this was interspersed with episodes of instrument throwing. One day he cursed at me…and in defense of the scrub nurse and all females on staff, I walked out. He tried—unsuccessfully—to get me fired.”
Most physicians get to put the bulk of their energies toward their education. Claudia Thomas was doing double duty. In the midst of it all, however, she found her heading. “I thought surgery would be a good choice for me because I had good manual dexterity and was comfortable with a needle and thread. I soon learned that I wanted to be as far away from general surgeons as possible, though. They were famous for terrible behavior; on one occasion I saw a general surgeon throw a blood clot at an anesthesiologist and say, ‘You stop this clotting right now!’”
Searching for a saner medical “home, ” Claudia Thomas happened to attend a life changing lecture. “Orthopedics was not a required rotation in medical school, but one day I went to a lecture by Dr. Gerhard Schmeisser, the head of orthopedics for Baltimore City Hospitals. It was an audio-taped slideshow and although he didn’t say a word ‘live, ’ it was the most exciting lecture I had ever attended. I was soon able to scrub in on a Southwick osteotomy and was astounded…here was the geometry I loved.”
And there was no throwing of anything in the orthopedic OR. “Night and day…I was so relieved to be with the orthopedists, who were enthusiastic and eager to teach. Although I was allowed to do as much as I was comfortable with, there were absolutely no women around me in orthopedics. I started wondering if there was some big secret…perhaps there were things involved in orthopedics that I couldn’t handle physically. I approached the chief resident, who, much to his credit, said, ‘There is no reason you can’t do this.’”
Her trailblazing past would serve her well as she proceeded through the residency application process. Dr. Thomas: “None of the programs I applied to had ever trained a female. Hospital for Joint Diseases was interested in me, but they didn’t do the match so I would have had to commit to them; at the time Columbia’s orthopedic ward was antiquated. And, when I visited Hospital for Special Surgery, the interviewer was unkempt and blurted out, ‘We are only accepting one woman this year if we accept any at all.’ I said to myself, ‘The hell with this’…but I got accepted. I ranked Yale higher, however, and couldn’t have had any better educational experience than the one I had with the esteemed, genuine, Dr. Wayne Southwick. Those who know him know how brave it was of him to train African American and female surgeons in that era.”
It was at Yale that Dr. Thomas would begin (informally) mentoring future physicians. “One day, as chief resident I was doing rounds with my parade of students when I overheard a male pediatric resident berating a female pediatrics intern…and she was crying. I took hold of that young lady and brought her into the utility room and said, ‘Don’t ever let them see you cry. Get yourself together before you go back out there.’”
Next week: Hear more about Dr. Thomas’ mentoring, her thoughts on how the field must change, and learn about her biggest battle…cancer.
Encouraging and inspiring.