Mildred Fay Jefferson was born in 1927 in Pittsburg, Texas. The daughter of a public school teacher and a Methodist minister, it was as solid a middle-class background for a girl born in the Jim Crow South.
After attending segregated public schools in east Texas, not known for high academic achievement, she attended Texas College, a Methodist college for black students, graduating summa cum laude. She came to Massachusetts, earning a master's of science degree at Tufts University.
Jefferson entered Harvard Medical School in 1947, and became the first black woman to graduate in 1951, one of many "firsts" for her. She was the first woman to be a surgical intern at Boston City Hospital and the first woman admitted to membership in the Boston Surgical Society.
Dr. Jefferson served as a general surgeon with the former Boston University Medical Center and assistant clinical professor of surgery at Boston University Medical School.
Dr. Jefferson had a strong interest in the law and ethics of medicine, and how they interacted to influence society and government. She was a dedicated supporter of the Right to Life movement, especially as it affected black people. A nationally recognized activist, she helped establish the National Right to Life committee and was its three-time president.
At a speech at Harvard in 2001, she stressed, "I am a right-to-life activist. I am not an anti-abortionist." In the same speech she was very critical of the birth control movement founded by Margaret Sanger and its concern about "dysgenics," which would have declared a poor, black girl like herself unworthy of being born.
Dr. Jefferson's last major public appearance was her nomination of Christy Mihos at the Republican convention. Mihos talked about their meeting.
"She was one gifted lady who was being considered by Ronald Reagan as his pick for surgeon general," he said. "Whenever she called, her first words to me were, 'Is this the Honorable Christy Mihos?' That was her calling card — grace, dignity, knowledge and compassion, a true stateswoman. I have never been so honored and proud as when she put my name into nomination. Her words of fighting for the truth and being true to your principles were utterly a humbling experience for me that day. She believed strongly and passionately that the welfare state had retarded the success of people of color. This woman was the true American story — up from nothing."
Mihos talked about their discussion of her role at the convention. "We met at her favorite spot in Cambridge and I just listened for two hours without saying much at all. We first met many years ago when she ran for U.S. Senate and many follow-up meetings at various events. At about the two-hour mark at lunch she looked at me with that ever-present twinkle in her eye and said she'd be 'honored to place your name in nomination.' She always smiled and was so damn positive and optimistic, even with all she had been through."
I heard that nomination speech. I asked Mihos' people for a copy, and one responded, "I spoke to her numerous times prior to the convention, picked her up from the hotel and personally escorted her to the green room and then the stage apron. She had her speech clutched in her hand and nobody had a copy of it. That's why I panicked when they moved her to the other side of the stage. No one really knew (except in general terms) what she would be saying."
Jefferson was not very respectfully treated by the arrogant young men with their Secret Service earpieces at the convention. Some rudeness was because some were too young to know who she was, but most of it was due to her supporting the "wrong" candidate. As she stood in the doorway to the stage being introduced, they decided she should enter from the OTHER side, making the 84-year-old woman walk down the staircase, to the other side of the enormous DCU Center in Worcester and up another staircase to their preferred podium.
Despite the noticeable gap in the program taking that walk, and arriving out of breath, it didn't matter when she spoke. Her soaring speech about the purpose of government was the acknowledged highlight of the convention, and she did her candidate proud.
A distinguished woman of color who shattered so many ceilings usually receives widespread media attention upon passing, as she did on Oct. 17, but just as Dr. Jefferson supported the wrong candidate, her conservative beliefs were the wrong philosophy. But they were her own, and she stood proudly behind them.
Cynthia Stead of Dennis serves as the Cape and Islands' Republican state committeewoman. E-mail her
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