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To Bear Fruit For Our Race College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences

Dr. Edward B. Perry

Dr. Edward B. Perry was born in Springfield, Missouri on June 22, 1902. He was valedictorian of his class at Lincoln High School in Kansas City, Missouri in 1919, and went on to attend Michigan University School of Medicine. He graduated from Howard University Medical School in 1928 and did his internship at Hospital No. 2 in St. Louis from 1928 until 1930. In 1945 and 1946, he took postgraduate work at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, in general surgery and gynecology. Dr. E.B. Perry eventually ended up in Houston, where he served as an attending surgeon at Riverside General Hospital and St. Elizabeth Hospital. He was also Director of Public Health Clinics at Prairie View A&M College.

In the 1950s, the staff at Houston Negro Hospital (Riverside) began to express dissatisfaction and humiliation about working in a building that was in such poor condition, and some were talking about the possibility of moving to the newly developing Texas Medical Center. This idea was quite controversial for the era. Dr. E.B. Perry, who, with two of his colleagues, was spearheading this effort for black physicians to join white facilities, started talking to the staffs at Jefferson Davis Hospital and the Harris County Medical Society. They compiled four sets of applications, and mailed them to the County Commissioners Office, the Houston City Council, the Harris County Medical Society, and the secretary of the staff of Jefferson Davis Hospital. This surprise action evoked much concern among the physicians’ white professional associates.

As a result of Dr. E.B. Perry’s and his colleagues’ endeavor, the management of Jefferson Davis Hospital staff quickly turned over to Baylor College of Medicine, requiring that blacks held membership in the Harris County Medical Society and were board certified in order to qualify for interracial medical practice. Notwithstanding the experience and proven ability that Dr. Perry and the others had, this transition closed all doors for black physicians to join the staff at a non-black hospital.

Rather than allow this series of events to act as an obstacle in their profession or prevent them from improving the conditions of the facility where they practiced medicine, the physicians at Houston Negro Hospital persevered and applied for a loan from the state government to use for renovations to their hospital. Dr. E.B. Perry was instrumental in this process and, as a result of the physicians’ efforts, they were granted the loan. With the money, they were able to improve the old structure, as well as construct a new building, which became Riverside General Hospital.

By the 1960s, Dr. E.B. Perry was program chairman of the staff at Riverside and had already served two terms of office as president of the Houston Medical Forum. In 1965, he wrote, “Riverside General Hospital, Formerly Houston Negro Hospital, Houston, Texas,” for the “Medical History” section of the Journal of the National Medical Association. In the tribute that Dr. John A. Kenney gave to Dr. E.B. Perry’s father, Dr. J.E., on the occasion of his retirement from practicing medicine, he concluded by saying, “May his mantle fall on his son, Dr. E.B. Perry, who has already shown evidence of imbibing a liberal share of that noble spirit.” Clearly, Dr. E.B. Perry found inspiration from his father’s work before him, and carried over that dedication to serving others into his own life and profession as a physician.

Next Biography: Drs. Eula B. and Levi Perry

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