Kate Ellis: Would you state your name, and when you were born, and where you were born for this sound check? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Well, I was born in Fitzgerald, Georgia in 1916, September 24th. And what else was for the recording? Kate Ellis: Your full name. George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: George Jefferson Thomas, Jr. Kate Ellis: This is Kate Ellis interviewing Dr. Thomas on July 11th, and I've just read a letter that he sent to the mayor and city councilman of New Orleans in 1963 in November, expressing outrage at—Was there a specific incident? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Yes. Well, it was at the time when there were a lot of sit-ins for places that were segregated, and he was a prominent minister and one of the officers in the long showman's organization, Reverend Alexander was. And he was sitting in the cafeteria in the city hall where everybody paid his taxes, including all of us, and because he was Black, he was literally manually dragged up or down the steps, I don't remember which one, because of his being there. Kate Ellis: And what was the response to this letter? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Well, he didn't answer the letter. And I sent a copy to the Times Tribune, which was the official, a White newspaper, and also the Louisiana Weekly, I don't know where you're familiar with that or run across it or not, that was a Black paper. And of course, the Black paper published it, wrote the editorial, but the White paper did not. But you asked me about his response and I was going to tell you, when Mayor Schiro, who was a mayor at that time, ran for reelection, he was one of his principal supporters. Kate Ellis: Wait, who was one of the— George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Reverend Alexander. Kate Ellis: Reverend Alexander was one of his supporters? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Yeah, so it just shows you how politics work. So that disillusioned me in so far as the political approach is concerned. Kate Ellis: Yeah, are you looking for something? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Yeah, I was looking for something, it had something about my family, but I don't see that, I don't have to have it. Kate Ellis: All right, very good. So if we can go way back to, you were born, you said a minute ago, in Georgia? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Yes. Kate Ellis: Where in Georgia? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Fitzgerald. Kate Ellis: Okay. George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: I don't know anything about it. Kate Ellis: All right, did you tell me earlier that you were from—That you grew up— George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Well, my father was a minister, he finished Talladega College like I did. And my first remembrance is in Atlanta, Georgia, where he was pastor of the Rush Memorial Congregational Church, that was the other assistance church to the first congregation of church, which was a lot more prominent and lots bigger, that was my first recollection of being around. And then we moved to Raleigh, where he became superintendent of the Southern Association, these were all Black churches, of course. And we stayed there three years, and then we moved to Winston-Salem, where he became pastor of Winston Memorial Congregational Church, and that's where I was raised for the most part and where he spent most of his life, his career, as pastor of Winston Memorial Congregational Church. Kate Ellis: So was it from Winston-Salem? It looks like we went to Talladega? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Yes. Kate Ellis: Okay, and then from Talladega, you went to Howard? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Yes. Kate Ellis: Okay, you were born in 1916, so you graduated from Talladega, when did you graduate? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: 1935. Kate Ellis: And then when did you graduate from Howard? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: 1941, I stayed out a couple of years, worked between college and medical school. I had to serve an internship after I finished med school, from '41 to '42, and then I went to a officer training school at Carlisle Barracks in Pennsylvania, and then I went into the army, the 93rd division, 25th infantry as a battalion search. And I stayed in army in four years, two years in the United States and two years in the South Pacific. Kate Ellis: During the war? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Mm-hmm. Kate Ellis: All right, I'll come back to that as far as asking about your experiences there, but I just want to get a general chronology. And then from there? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Well, I had been mostly in the field dealing with the infantry, so I called myself a sanitary officer, first aid doctor, and treating the wounded, who were in the South Pacific, [indistinct 00:05:41] strategy was not to win any territory, but he always established a little peninsula, a little sector out on the island enough to build an airplane base from which the planes bombed the different targets in southwest Pacific. So that was principally our mission. Kate Ellis: Your mission [indistinct 00:06:05] to help the— George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: To hold the perimeter that they had established on the island so that the planes could leave, and come back, and stay there, all we had to do was just hold that perimeter, protect them. But of course, to do that, you have to send out scouts, which meant that the infantry units had to go out every morning or every afternoon to see if anybody was approaching the base. And of course, they ran in the ambushes from time to time, but we had no hospital there, it was to give first aid to them and then send them back to hospitals that were further behind the lines than we were. Kate Ellis: So temporary treatment until they get to the hospital? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Mm-hmm. Kate Ellis: And that was pretty much your position there? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Yeah. Kate Ellis: Mm-hmm. So you came back, what? In '45? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: I came back in 1945, but I was really formally discharged from the army in 1946, so I realized the need to get back in touch with medicine because I hadn't been practicing that much in the army. And I was trying to get a residence in urology, and a friend of mine in Winston-Salem had a brother here who was a neurologist. And after traveling around the principal places that I wanted to go like New York, and Philadelphia, and Chicago, and those places unsuccessfully, because then, as now, as I'm sure whenever you leave a position to go to the forces, when you come back, they have to give you a position, so the residents who already held those positions came back, plus the ones who were coming out [indistinct 00:07:48] things. George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: So I came down here to do a residency at Flint-Goodridge Hospital. And at the time, Dr. Fuller, who has just been recently become a diplomat of the American Board of Urology, the second Black one to become a diplomat, told me he would help me all could. And Dr. Vicary, who was head of department at one of the leading hospitals, a Jewish hospital, [indistinct 00:08:20] hospital, had done his residency training at John Hopkins Hospital and was working with one of the most prominent urologists, he had said he would help me. George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: And I stayed down here thinking I probably go back to Winston-Salem, but at the time, Dr. Fuller went to some little town in Mississippi to make a speech, and coming back home—This was after I'd been in training for about a couple years, he stopped by the roadside to eat his lunch, because he couldn't go to any White place. After he finished, he had his canteen, pour some water out that was left out, he got to drinking on the side and he was arrested in Mississippi and taken to jail. George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: And they brought him before the magistrate, and he was trying to get back to New Orleans, and he told the judge that he was Dr. Fuller, diplomat of the American Board of Urologists, and he was trying to get back. So the judge told him that he didn't give a goddamn who he was, to him, he was just another nigger. So when he did get back to New Orleans, he told me he couldn't take it anymore, so he offered me his practice and I knew if I went back to Winston-Salem, I'd have to build a practice. And Dr. Vicary, who is, as I said, was the head of the department, said that he would help me all he could, so I knew I couldn't get any training here in other hospitals because they were all segregated. Kate Ellis: So Flint-Goodridge? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Yes. Kate Ellis: What? That was around 1950, '40? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: I came down here in 1946. Kate Ellis: Okay, so where did Dr. Fuller go? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Dr. Fuller went to Newark, New Jersey. Kate Ellis: Really? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Uh-huh. Kate Ellis: How was it for you then down here? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Well, it was not easy because I had just come out of the army, and I didn't know that many people down here, and I was married, and I had a couple of kids, [indistinct 00:10:24], one on the way, and I had been promised aid from the Veterans Administration under there set up. So I came down here July the first and they were supposed to have paid me during my residency and bought all my books and equipment, but unfortunately, I stayed down here from July to that following January without anything from the government. So the only thing that I could depend on was what I would pick up in the emergency room, I think they paid me $25 a month [indistinct 00:10:57]. Kate Ellis: Why didn't the government give you support? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Well, I guess it's the same red tape that you run into everywhere, you right here and you right there, and I don't think they ever did that much, but I think they did finally buy some equipment from me, but beyond that, I was more or less on my own. Kate Ellis: So essentially, you started from that point and Dr. Fuller left and gave you his practice? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Yes. Kate Ellis: Did things start to change after that as far as— George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Well, it wasn't that easy because at that time, I don't think there were—He probably was about the only Black specialist here, because everybody else was in general practice, they had some that were doing surgery, of course, but they were not specialized in terms of certification. So it wasn't easy because you read animosity from all sides, you couldn't get in the White hospitals, they wouldn't let you train, they wouldn't let you come to any meetings. George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: And this Dr. Vicary, who was very prominent in all circles on a national basis, he tried to get me in some of the meetings when they had American Urological Association meetings here, but they would always say that they couldn't let me in because it was against the law, so then I couldn't go to the sessions. And then the Black doctors, they asked, "Well, who does he think he is that he can just practice in a certain thing? He got to do like all the rest of us, treat everything." Kate Ellis: Oh, really? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Uh-huh. Kate Ellis: You can't specialize if you're [indistinct 00:12:54], saying you can't specialize? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Well, I guess it just was new to them to have somebody who was Black to say that he was a specialist and not treating anything. And at that time, we had to do a lot of free work at the hospital too because we had all kinds of clinics and we had to cover all kinds of services, OB-GYN and everything else. And if you on the staff, you were expected to take your turnout, thinking that we would try to preserve the hospital for the younger fellows who would soon be getting their certifications and training, and come back here and make something out of the hospital, so that was the theoretical basis of it. Kate Ellis: Mm-hmm. Can you tell me more about that? As far as what kind of expectations there were of you at— George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Well, you see at that time, there was full segregation, whether you wanted to go to Flint-Goodridge or not, there was nowhere else you could go. And the same was true with the White doctors, if they wanted to treat a Black patient, they had to bring them to Flint, they couldn't take them to their hospitals. So they had to come in, and do the surgery, and do those things until integration, of course. When integration came, then at one time, we had a lot more courtesy staff doctors than we had active staff doctors, I think about two or 300 maybe more doctors on the courtesy staff who were White and at one time, there were only 18 Black doctors in the city of New Orleans. Kate Ellis: Uh-huh, they must have all worked at? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Those that worked in the hospitals somehow didn't work in hospitals at all when they got [indistinct 00:14:46], the hospitals they was supposed to give them, somebody that was on the staff. Kate Ellis: So it just sounds like there was an extraordinary burden as far as the services you were expected to cover. George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Well, that's true. And then we had to depend on ourselves for our own continued medical education because we couldn't to go to their meetings, we had to have our own Black societies and we had to get doctors who, if you could find a friendly doctor from another hospital or medical school, there was Tulane and LSU universities. Kate Ellis: White doctors? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Yeah, who would come and lecture to us. And if we had seminars, we might get doctors who were from other parts of the country who had a chance to get training and to be on the staff at the bigger hospitals in the east and other sections to come to lecture. Kate Ellis: Was it hard to get them to come? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: No, we got pretty good cooperation, there weren't a whole lot of them to get, but those that there were, they seemed to enjoy coming and we enjoyed having them. But we depended mostly on the medical schools, places like Howard and Meharry, who were only two Black medical schools, they were our principal source of getting lecturers to come. Kate Ellis: They'd come on down? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Mm-hmm. Kate Ellis: Uh-huh. I noticed that you sent in the letter that you were denied affiliation in the American Medical Association because you couldn't join the local Jim Crow medical society, what was the name of that medical society? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: The one that was here that was Black? The Orleans Parish Medical Society is the White one, and we were the New Orleans Medical Association, NOMA, New Orleans Medical Association, and they were Orleans Parish Medical Society, OPMS. Kate Ellis: And why were you denied affiliation in the American Medical Association? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Well, you had to be a member of the local society and the state society to get into the American Medical Association, we couldn't join the local society, so we couldn't get to the state. Kate Ellis: But the association that you had, the Black association, wasn't considered— George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Well, we were members of the National Medical Association, which is the Black counterpart of the American Medical Association. So we had the NMA and they had the AMA, but now of course, it's opened doors, and still is a double burden to those who belong to both as they had to pay double, they paid both organizations. Kate Ellis: Did you eventually join both? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Well, I did for a long time, after I had practiced for 50 years, then they give you honorary memberships in the White societies, I still paid the Black, but in the White, they sent me my membership and they gave me a pen [indistinct 00:18:06] 50 years of being a member in the society, certificates, and they had a big luncheon, both the local Orleans Parish Medical Society and the Louisiana State Medical Association. Kate Ellis: [indistinct 00:18:27] service? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Mm-hmm. Kate Ellis: Mm-hmm. I want to eventually get back and learn more about your childhood years, but this is a really interesting aspect of your life. Can you tell me more about the way that the Jim Crow laws and Morris in this city shaped your medical practice and what you could and couldn't do? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Yeah. Well, when I came up out the service, I was one of seven children and I was the only boy for about 10 years before I got a brother who recently died. And at the time he died, he was the deputy commissioner of the [indistinct 00:19:31] of the state of Georgia, which is the same as the Civil Service Commission here. But my father was a very [indistinct 00:19:39] guy and he did a good job of putting us all through school. And of course, he [indistinct 00:19:47] the fact that I was always ahead of my time, because I had two sisters in front of me and my mother and father were educated, which was very unusual at that time, there were very few Black people who were. George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: And my sisters would come home and they would talk about all that, and my mother would read to us all the time, so I always scored high on these tests, which measure it, not as much your intelligence as what you've been exposed to, so most of these things that they ask, I skipped a lot of things I probably shouldn't have. And I think I was about 14 when I went to college and I was around about 17 or 18 when I came out, which I shouldn't have finished that early, I was not emotionally ready for it. And I felt like I couldn't do anything because I had a bachelor of arts degree, which prepared you, give you a good, broader background. George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: So I was sergeant, I didn't go get a BS in something at one of these state schools or something, but I don't feel that way now, I'm glad I did because it's given me quite a new perspective. But I ran into segregation and it hurt me, and I guess it hurt me more in med school than it did any other time because I came home from medical school one Christmas to visit my folks, and when I was there, I was riding the bus, and when I got on the bus, there was only one seat left and that was on some little uncomfortable position where I was, so I told the guy I wasn't moving. So they called the law, and they took me off the bus, and put me in this car between the driver and one police, and I was sitting between two. George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: So they kept were talking to me and they asked me where was I going, I told them I was going back to med school, so they asked me if I was going back out there and get on the bus, I told them no, I was not going to sit on the bus, I was not going back on the bus if I had to sit back there, I'd just take my things and get on the train. So one of the guys said, "Sit beside me," he said, "What this goddamn nigger—" So they took me down to the end, sat me down a little room and made some calls, and I guess when they called, they found out my father, he was pretty influential at the time, they knew that he [indistinct 00:22:14] about my being there. George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: So they let me go and told me that if I wanted to go back on the bus, I was going to have to sit in the back, so I told them no, I went on back to school and I didn't say anything to my father about it because I knew he'd say probably and I'd have to stay around and hang around, and I want to go on back to school, primary interest was getting out of med school, hard enough then, because I didn't have that much support and I had to work and skivvy me any way I could to try to get through. So that was a very hard experience too, then when I got into the army, I was one of the first Black officers because there weren't that many Black officers, and most of the people who were officers at that time were Southerners, these poorly trained Southern Whites had a good chance to make a lot of money and by being—Most of them had some hard feelings toward Black officers, they gave me a hard way to go too. Kate Ellis: What'd they do? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Yeah. Well, anything they could do to criticize, make it worse for you, or deny your promotions if they felt like you weren't all that. So one or two times, I think once they had me up for a court marshal, said that I had neglected to do something for some soldier, I don't know what it was, some kind of cooked up charge, but it was just that kind of thing, it was a constant harassment. And it was not only to me, but it was to other people as well. George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: There was a guy there by the name of Leighton at the time, who taught me how to pay chess in Chicago, who was a lawyer at the time and who later became a federal judge there in Chicago, who was also court marshaled because of that general attitude towards most of the soldiers who were illiterate, there were soldiers who had no business in the army, a lot of them came in who had all kinds of physical defects, some of them with plates in the head, some of them with deformities that you wonder how they'd ever get in the army but they got in there anyway. Kate Ellis: These are White soldiers? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: No, these are Black soldiers mostly. Well, it was a segregated army at that time, we didn't have any White soldiers. Kate Ellis: Okay, I see. George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Uh-huh. So they were all back, you had some White officers who were over there, but staff sergeants and even platoon, and you had one or two captains, and you might see a major every now and then who was—But they were far few between, when you got above a level of French lieutenant, you almost reached the summit, at least it was when I went in the 93rd, 92nd. George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: So I came down here with some feelings, but I always felt like that we could do what was necessary on our own, my whole philosophy, and that's why I brought all these things down there because my whole philosophy built that we can do what we need to do if we can work together. I tried to get the doctors to buy some property around there, and build their own clinics, and do one thing, which didn't work out. Then finally, there was a friend of mine who was a great surgeon by name of Dr. Joseph Epps who wanted to form a group, so he asked me and another fellow, who's OB-GYN, come with him and enter general practice, and we formed a group of four that finally grew into a group of 18 [indistinct 00:26:11] specialists, covering all fields, and board certified people who came down here. George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: But the great tragedy of the thing was that we had to promise them a certain guaranteed income, and I guess the average when they came at that time was around about $40,000, but we bought all the equipment and some of it was pretty expensive, especially in fields like gastroenterology, we bought about $30,000 because they were using all this sophisticated endoscopic things where you can look into the gastrointestinal tract, catheter eyes, the gallbladder ducts, and the pancreatic ducts, and that type of thing. George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: And they had the option at the end of two years of either joining us or getting out of the group, but the guy comes out and they say, "Well, why should I assume an obligation when I can go into practice scot-free, I've got a handmade practice because of everybody in the group. If I was in surgery, if I was in OB-GYN, or if I was in internal medicine, or if I was in eye and nose and throat, or any other field, everything that I got that I could send to another specialist, I would." George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: So when he got ready to pull out, all he did was sit down and write a letter, "After such and such a date, I would be located at such and such a place." And that means that not only were you left with the debt since you had to borrow to pay the salaries and buy the equipment, give them all the benefits that you could possibly think of, vacations, so many hours of credits to go to that they could take a trip to, and all these life insurance, every benefit you could think of. George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: So after you've done that a few times, it really gets to you, so we ran into difficulties, management was a very important thing and we just didn't get the kind of management that we should have had. And when we finally did break up, we had about $3 million or so in accounts receivable, which was a lot of money at that time, it's not that much now, but then, 3 million. But when you put them in accounts receivable, they collect the money but you don't get it, they charge high, anywhere from 30 to 50% of what they collect goes to them. Kate Ellis: Uh-huh. You mean the people basically helping run the practice or the— George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Well, in other words, if I go to you and say—You accounts receivable person, and I say, "Well, we had this money, can you collect it for us?" See, they would— Kate Ellis: [indistinct 00:28:57]. George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Oh, yeah, they would write and tell them, "Well, you owe so much if you don't pay it by such and such a time, we take you to court," they get the lawyers around and scare them up or do anything, they harass them on their jobs, or they do things that they have time to do and will do. Well, while we were paying people who were more or less killing all, having coffee breaks, and talking, gossiping, and we told them— George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Man, then when things start getting tightened, interest rates were going up, they went up as high as 22% at that time, the manager would tell us, "Well, we can, we can—we got to cut the payrolls—" We can't because if we cut the payrolls, then the income tax people were going to come up for lack of having not paid employment insurance. Well, they finally came on against us anyway, which I'm still paying some of the debts that we incurred on a monthly basis, but you just couldn't get them to do it. But I don't regret it because I feel this way, I say, well, at one time, and I wish I had had the time to look up those pictures, because we had a first class facility and it was a first class building, we had laboratory work, and it was just something you could be proud of, Black or White. Kate Ellis: What was it called? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Medical Associates. Kate Ellis: Okay, and what were the years that it was in existence? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Well, we came into assistance about 1960 and we finally folded around 1984 when Dr. Epps died, he was a principal and this is a picture of some of the original group of people that formed the association. Kate Ellis: I wonder what year this is. Am I right that this is you right there? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Yeah, it was about the time that a patient painted that thing. Kate Ellis: So that is you, that portrait? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Yeah. Kate Ellis: Okay. George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Patient of mine did that. Kate Ellis: Can I look at this? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Yes, sure. That was when we first moved. Kate Ellis: When you first moved? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Moved up there too, that was when we were doing. Kate Ellis: So this was the sixties? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Yeah. Kate Ellis: So you have lots of photos? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Huh? Kate Ellis: You have lots of photographs? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Yeah, so like I said, we brought a lot of physicians in it now, you can count the numbers. Kate Ellis: Sorry, you did what? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: We brought a lot of specialists, Black specialists in the town, that never would've been here if we hadn't paved a way from them. Kate Ellis: And they would set up their own practice once they— George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Yeah, that's right. Cardiologists, we paid, bought seats, we guaranteed loans for some of them to get seats in cardiology, we bought all the equipment that they needed. Kate Ellis: Did they come from all over? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Well, some of them were natives, some that were born in, some that came from neighboring places like across the lake and Biloxi and the Gulf Coast. But some of them were never here before, so I don't think it was exactly fair. And it wasn't just a matter of my feeling that way about medicine, it was also a way that I felt about things from an economic standpoint, and it was in that light that I became a part of a group that formed the savings and loan association here, that we were in existence for about 25 years, Kate Ellis: Starting when? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Around about 1962 or '64, somewhere along there, I think we've been stayed in business for about 25 years, and we must have been taken over by a [indistinct 00:33:06] agency about '89 or so. Kate Ellis: What was the name of the savings and loan? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: United Federal Savings and Loan. Kate Ellis: That's what you [indistinct 00:33:18]? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: This is one of the Black groups, that was the Black hospital, that was not the final place it was located, it was finally located uptown then. But I had a wealth of information and I was injured in 1989, I was knocked unconscious about a month and stayed in the hospital two months, and was disabled for about a year, and had planned to get all this stuff organized, but I never did. And I had such an astounding hospital bill and other hospital and doctor bill that I had to go back to work. So I still hadn't gotten it, but I was bringing some down here, but I didn't get it organized. Kate Ellis: Are you still in practice now? Are you still working? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Well, I work in the mornings from 09:00 to 02:00 in a plasma center where I examine patients donating plasma. In the afternoons, I work at the Parish [indistinct 00:34:23], I go back there about two o'clock and I work till about six o'clock. Kate Ellis: I had no idea that your— George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Five days a week. Kate Ellis: —schedule is so busy. George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Uh-huh. Kate Ellis: Wow. George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: So I feel about that the same way, we're a great institution, the year before we were taken over by [indistinct 00:34:42], we were—we started out with $1,000,000, we ended up worth $50 million. And the year before we were taken over, we were the best yielding savings in the country that size for 50 million, which was a small institution, and a lot of Black [indistinct 00:35:10] that they never would've had if it had been for us. But here again, when the things started getting tough around that time that we did have and all of them started folding, I don't think it was anything crooked that went on [indistinct 00:35:25], but at the time we made loans, we were making sound loans for people who had good jobs, and good collateral, and good credit records, but if you don't have a job, no matter what your intents are, you can't do it. George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: And then that was the other thing here again, was our fault, because when they would come to make a loan and you'd ask them all the financial questions, you're supposed to ask them, "How much money do you have saved and where do you have it saved?" They had big accounts, "Well, I got 100,000, 200,000," but they were all taking them to White institutions, but they would come to us to borrow. So of course, we asked them, "Well, how you expect us to loan you money if you're taking your money—" But that's just the way it was. So that was another aspect of something that I guess you would consider a failure along with this multi-specialty group, but here I think it did some good. And we had the same experience with a recreational facility, we bought about 42 acres of land across the lake there and we built a nice resort, little country club. We had an artificial lake, a clubhouse, and a swimming pool. Kate Ellis: Who did this? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: A group of doctors started out with it. Kate Ellis: When? In the sixties again or? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: All this was around about the same time. Kate Ellis: Okay, go ahead. George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: But people had nice homes, very few people had pools, most of them had small kids, so they all needed something like this. But now everybody has a big house and a big pool, the children are grown up so they say, "[indistinct 00:37:10]," so we had that up for sale, but we finally did not exclude anybody who had the money and wanted to get in there. Kate Ellis: So you would allow Whites as well? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Well, we had no Whites in that. When we started the savings and loan association, we did have one or two Whites on the board, but we ran into resistance there, because to start a savings and loan, you had to get permission from the regional office, which was in Little Rock at the time. And I think there were 32 savings and loan institutions in New Orleans at the time, and I don't think any of them Black, if there were, couldn't have been on one. So when we went to Little Rock to apply, we were denied the right to do it, and then we had to go to Washington, so when we won in Washington, they said that we could do it, but we had to raise $1,000,000 in capital. Now, that means you got to go out and get people to pledge if you open your loan so as to not put so much in there, so that's how we got started with them. George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: But I don't regret it, I'm sorry that we didn't succeed as we should have. We started out at about the same time as Liberty Bank, that's one of the Black institutions and they've done very well, but they've had much better management. And some people claim that it is not really a Black institution. All of our money was practically Black, whether they claimed a lot of it as White, but it had Black [indistinct 00:38:17] and Black representation, so whether that's true or not, I don't know. Kate Ellis: Can I take you back to something that you said earlier, which I think I didn't follow up on properly? When you were talking about—And then again, we're jumping around here, but when you're talking about in World War II and the Black soldiers, so you said you didn't understand why they were there or how they got there, they had plates in their head, what were you trying to tell me about that? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Well, I think that it was more or less designed for faith, I just don't think that they intended for Blacks to be successful in the army. And I used to shudder to think how it would be actually winning the combat, and here, the average education of a soldier, I guess was fourth or fifth grade and probably that's poor, fourth or fifth, because at the time I came home, when I was a kid, and you had a fourth or fifth education, you could add and subtract, and read and write, and do a whole lot of things that a whole lot of kids coming out of high school can't do now. George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: But if you are out in the field and you got a mortar, you have your rifleman in front, and you have your mortar squad, platoon, and they got to shoot over your head, it's not that way now because you got all these computers and all they got to do is hit the right buttons. But then they had to sit down mathematically and describe what angle they would use to shoot over your head. So these were the kind of things, and you got to air some intelligence in some sense. And you can't blame the soldiers, they just did not have this, man, most of them were from Texas, the backwoods of Texas and the backwoods of Louisiana, they had very little education and they had very little intelligence, and I would guess the average IQ might have been around about 50, 60, or 70 at the most. George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: So I think that it is just everything else at that time, that they didn't care who went into the army as long as it was Black, they should be in the army, [indistinct 00:41:01], if they had been White soldiers, I don't think they ever would've been put into it, they would not have passed the examination. Kate Ellis: But you feel like their sense was these bodies were expendable? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Yeah, I think so. Kate Ellis: Mm-hmm. So it's okay if they're not trained, it's okay if they're going shoot each other in the head instead of shooting each other over? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Yeah, it's okay if they have all these physical defects and you crippled, you have metals in your head, and you have this, that, and the other hard murmurs and obvious defects, physical defects you don't have any business in the army— Kate Ellis: Right, mm-hmm. You're endangering your own life, you're endangering other people's lives. George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Sure. Kate Ellis: Mm-hmm. George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: So that's what I meant by that. Kate Ellis: Uh-huh, I just wanted to— George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: But it was not only that area, when I came out here, I joined the Boy Scouts, I was the physician for the Boy Scouts, I was with the chairman of the health and whatever committee to take care of health. But this was the John Albert division of the Boy Scouts, which was black, I belonged to the Y, I got on the board of directors of YMCA, but it was a segregated YMCA, we were not a part of the YMCA at that time, the Black division and the White division. The same thing was, see the Boy Scouts, the YMCA, I'm not sure about the Red Cross, I don't think [indistinct 00:42:44], but that was the kind of thing that [indistinct 00:42:49]. Kate Ellis: Everything was always segregated. George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Mm-hmm. And same thing with parks. When we first got the opportunity to play golf, first for a long time, we were denied, we could not play golf in city parks, [indistinct 00:43:04] here again, paying taxes. When we finally did decide, they let us play golf. At one time, we was going to play on Thursdays, and I know the superintendent at the hospital and I used to go out there in the rain on Thursday just to get— Kate Ellis: [indistinct 00:43:22]. George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: And we didn't play it that serious, to shame us, we just didn't get a chance to play. So all these things make [indistinct 00:43:31], but I don't hold up an excuse, I think that we are just as guilty as anybody else. I think that segregation too really did us more harm. When I first came to New Orleans, you had some very successful business, you had some large insurance companies, had franchises and grocery stores, and areas where it is big business, property owners. Kate Ellis: Black-owned, right? You're saying? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Yes, but when segregation came, everybody can't go where they want to, and we got the same disappointment and the people that we had been making sacrifices to try to keep the hospital open— Flint-Goodridge was owned by Dillard University and they wanted to sell the hospital, and we asked them not to sell. Dr. Fredrick, who was one of the pioneers down here, [indistinct 00:44:22], and they finally decided to— Well, we got a group of doctors together at one time, we had met all the demands, but every time we needed demand and go back to them, they want something else. Kate Ellis: Like what? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: And for 25 years, I was medical director of the hospital. So I came to the conclusion that the doctors didn't want it because they weren't really make the sacrifice, the community didn't want it because nobody came out and said, "Well, let's save this hospital, we need it," so I just signed and said, "Well, let it go," because I felt like I— Kate Ellis: Were you disillusioned by that? George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: Well, sure, I was disillusioned, but I had seen it happen in so many cities, not just New Orleans, it happened in Philadelphia, it happened in Chicago, it happened in a lot of big cities where the doctors who were Black let the Black hospitals go, but they regretted it once they—Because they realized that they ran into the same type of segregation. For instance, when [indistinct 00:45:26] went to Newark, I used to go visit him fairly often and they let him move up on the stair fairly rapidly, but when he got to a certain point, that was it. George Jefferson Thomas, Jr.: But he again, even though he ran into prejudice, not like he did north as he did south, he realized that wherever you go, you're going to run into it, if it's not on that basis, it wasn't so much Black against White as it was Irish against Catholics or Jews, against Gentiles, that's the kind of segregation you had fighting one another, just like here until recently, you had your Black hospital, where you did have it before Flint closed, but you have your Jewish hospitals, you got the Catholic hospital, you got your Baptist hospital, you got your Memphis hospital, but now they, they're forced with this new Clinton plan and training toward social medicine to be a—