four clock p.m. eastern, and you can watch any of our programs at any time when you visit our website, c-span.org/history. you are watching american history tv, all >> next, diane keyes old discusses the lie >> ferebee fought for racial equality and health care improvements for african-americans throughout the 20th century. >> thank you for joining us. my name is gavin. i want to thank you for taking time out of your holiday festivities, battling the that

whether. bad weather. membership support and contributions to bring you programs like this. youou enjoy this, i hope will make a contribution. our guest is diane kiesel. she sits in the integrated domestic violence court before being appointed to the bench, she spent 10 years as a prosecutor. she is adjunct professor of law and author of a textbook, domestic violence. she won a number of prizes. she will be speaking about ferebee, a civil rights activist. dr. ferebee grew up in virginia.

she attended boston latin students college. she graduated in 1924, launching an activist career that lasted until her death. she advised congress on civil rights issues and health policy. today she is almost forgotten. judge diane kiesel will speak about her and put her in a national context. thank you. [applause] diane: thank you. can you hear me? thank you for coming. i think the massachusetts is historical society are hosting me. june 11, 1963 president kennedy

appeared on national television to ask congress to enact landmark civil rights legislation. cnn wasn't the days of where you have to fill a new cycle 24 hours. when the president came on tv it was important. what he said was as follows. we are confronted with a moral issue. it is as old as the scriptures and clear as the american constitution. if an american cannot eat lunch at a restaurant open to the public, sent his children to the best goals available, cannot vote for the public officials who represent him, who among us would be content to have the cover of his skin change. who among us would be content with councils of

patience and delay. dorothy ferebee is the topic of my talk this evening. she died in washington dc in 1980. during her life she suffered all the indignity described by president kennedy. dorothy was never content with councils of patients and delay. as a physician and civil rights activist she devoted her life to writing the wrongs articulated by president kennedy. thatould call on her summer to come to the rose garden and help him win over legislators to his civil rights bill. by that summer dorothy was the most recognizable black woman in america.

in the 1920's she started the first black settlement house in washington dc. during the great depression she led one of the most famous health programs in history, the mississippi health project through which she brought medical care to 15,000 destitute sharecroppers and tenant farmers. some had never seen a toothbrush let alone a medical doctor. on the eve of world war ii she alpha, the cap national so laura -- surety of elite black college women. in the 1950's she was president of the national council of negro women and use that platform to advise presidents and testified before congress on key civil rights issues. selma 1960's she went to

to join sncc and its voting rights campaign. worldaveled to the third as an advisor to the state department to bring best health care practices to foreign service workers working in third world countries. 1970's, old nl, she led a delegation to international women's year in mexico city. she was the chair of the d.c. council commission on the status of women were she was determined to make washington a location for safe access to abortions. she wrote a syndicated column to the african-american newspapers. every night of her life she inod at podiums like this churches, schools, hotel ballrooms, libraries to bring her message to the public.

1980 thethy died in washington post published a glowing tribute to her. the editor said it took more than a little cover -- courage to break down the barriers of sex and color. dorothy ferebee knew how to do so with a marvelous blend of compassion, and class. and then her story dies with her. to begin to understand why, and who she was, in what motivated her we need to recall another famous speech from the same year president kennedy spoke. he called for a civil rights bill on august 28, 1963. dr. martin luther king stood before the lincoln memorial and uttered the immortal line that began with the phrase i have a dream.

at the turn of the 20th century dorothy had a dream. as a child playing on her grandfather's front porch from his victorian mansion in virginia she dreamed of becoming a doctor. whenever a bird fell out of a tree her grandmother would give her strips of material and she would rescue the little bird by making a sling for his broken foot or wing. south remains of the old dorothy's dream of becoming a doctor was little more than a height dream. in the 1890's there were 150 black women doctors in the entire country. the only school dorothy could hope to attend in virginia was the cumberland street colored school where the children were trained for the manual labor

they believed was their fate and destiny. the city of boston becomes the place where dorothy is able to turn her childhood dream into a reality. she was one of the talented 10, w bphrase coined by dr. w du bois to describe the leaders. grandfather,ernal a man named richard page known to his contemporaries as our gl -- r g l was born into slavery, as or his three brothers. his father was most certainly white. his and was apparently an

excellent seamstress. his mother died when he was a child. of 1855 a yellow fever epidemic that estimates the white population of norfolk and leaves the city and turmoil. aunt, hisof his mother's sister, he is a white man who dies in the epidemic. the remnants of her family, dorothy's grandfather and brothers, and her aunt, they are terrified they are going to be separated and sold. they decide one by one to make a run for it. joins runawayt slaves who paid the captain of a boat to take them to philadelphia. from there with the help of the underground railroad she makes it to boston.

dorothy's great uncle thomases the next. followed by her grandfather. they paid their way here. he doesn't have any money. he stows away on the ship. he finds himself in philadelphia and is sent to boston. their story is told by william still in a book that you can see over the african-american museum in boston on joyce street. he was the secretary of the keptdelphia society and accounts of runaway stories. wasery in the state abolished by the supreme judicial court in 1783. in boston the runaway pages live on beacon hill at 62 people in

street with the prominent george stillman hillard and his wife. this was an area known to abolitionists. the meetinghouse was there, william lloyd garrison made speeches during the time the pages would have lived here. , the house in which they were living was a writer, a lawyer, politician and the judge. he was a trustee of the boston public library in for a time he was charles sumner's law partner. mrs. hillard was an abolitionist working with sumner, harriet beecher stowe to help pave the way for runaway slaves to come to boston along with the poet longfellow. most interestingly george

hillard became the united states commissioner. commissioners were responsible under the 1850's fugitive slave law returning runaway slaves to their rightful owners in the south. enough, while hillard is doing this by day he at night, there is half the page family living in his attic. one wonders how much his heart was in abiding by the fugitive slave law or whether he was engaged in his own one-man protest against it. he lived with the hillard's until the end of the civil war. he was taught a trade and started to mingle with austin african -- boston african-american elite. he met his wife at the 12th baptist church and married her in 1868.

she was the sister of george ruffin, the first african-american man to graduate from harvard law school. his wife was a well-known suffragette. after the war our gl returns to norfolk, becomes a member of the general assembly during reconstruction and goes on to be a lawyer, businessman and wealthy fellow. he and his wife had nine children. one of whom, florence cornelia page was dorothy's mother. were graduates of hampton institute. her father was a good friend of booker t. washington. they had three children, their youngest and dorothy. it was natural after the family's long historical connection to boston that dorothy would get out of the cumberland street colored school

and go someplace where she could be educated. she did not go to boston latin. she went to boston girls school. she was an amazing scholar there. from there she went on to simmons college. when dorothy lived in boston she lived with the remnants of the ruffin family at 62 west cedar street. girls highating from in 1915 she went to simmons college and graduated from tufts medical school with honors in 1924. simmons audience members this will excite you. puts hersimmons she toe into the civil rights waters. student, shed writes the most amazing essay against lynching.

so amazing and made the local newspapers. colored girl at simmons writes on lynching. it was written during world war i. she was a sophomore. she asked in this essay how america could be alive with the cause of freedom around the herd when at the same time americanism, her ideal of justice and mercy has been shamefully this merged upon her own free soil by lynching. it is knowledge of such crimes common to both the public and the government and no voice, no pin, no hand is raised in protest. the sins settle upon the brow of every american citizen. those are pretty strong words from a kid. context, when she wrote these the espionage act had just been enacted.

disloyal,the use of profane, or abusive language about the united states on pain of up to 20 years in prison. essay whichext this is critical of the united states and its lack of doing anything about lynching, it was particularly courageous. but that was dorothy. 1924eft boston for good in and moved to washington dc to intern at the segregated friedman's hospital in washington dc. applications for internships required a photograph and dorothy's photo showed a face that was black. therefore, friedman's hospital was the only hospital that would take her even though she graduated with honors from medical school.

friedmans was known as howard university hospital, affiliated with the medical school there and until 1950 it trained every -- half of alln african-american doctors in the country were trained at howard. she stayed there until she .etired in 1968 she was an obstetrician, gynecologist. school,ht at a medical opened a private practice, ran howard university student health service and delivered african-american children throughout the city. health service delivery was segregated in that city. if you ask african-american senior citizen today, anyone over 85 years old if she knows dorothy ferebee, the quest -- the chances are they will say

sure, she delivered me. dorothy made waves in washington dc. she was articulate and attractive, always in a tailored suit or dress. early on he became clear she never met a podium she didn't love. she started her lifelong speaking career in a voice that sounded like a cross between eleanor roosevelt and rose kennedy. she spoke often and early in the d.c. public schools. the first time she climbed on her soapbox it was to lecture about one of her favorite topics -- sex education. it was her view children as young as five years old should be taught about sex education and birth control. once again this is dorothy. this is in the 1920's. in the 1920's it is illegal to

advocate contraception in public. the rest of the medical profession was not on board with this. the american medical association did not endorse birth control until 1937. some of this got her in hot water because she also talked a lot about the need for passing on good genes. this got her tart a little bit with the eugenics movement. thehe 1920's it was not dirty word it became after the holocaust and hitler. dorothy married a colleague from howard university in 1930. a movie star handsome dentist named dr. claude thurston ferebee. had aspired to be an artist.

a year later she gave birth to twins, a boy and girl. the boy was named claude, the girl dorothy. as she put it, no controversy. one for him, one for me. their marriage was always rocky. whys hard to understand other than the fact that it must've been very difficult to be mr. dr. dorothy ferebee because she clearly was the reigning star in the family. while she was out saving the world her children were largely out of control and her jealous husband found solace in the arms of other women. 1950her daughter died in of a botched abortion that dorothy could have safely herself, her marriage died along with her daughter.

her husband blamed her for their daughter's death thinking had dorothy not been so famous and powerful their daughter would not have been afraid to bring this to her attention and possibly could have been saved. it is hard to put your finger on where dorothy was most successful and most famous. mary claude bassoon is as the second president of the national council of negro women. it really was the nascent civil rights movement. she became a familiar face in the halls of congress lobbying for federal money to build black hospitals, improve black schools openo force lawmakers to

the doors of mainstream life to african-americans. she always pushed for a federal bill to in lynching in the country and was never successful in doing that. to was a familiar face eleanor roosevelt, mimi eisenhower, the in and to the president. to truman, roosevelt, lyndon johnson. and president kennedy. as the civil rights movement grew younger and more radical in the 1960's and early 1970's her influence waned and her talented ideals became as woefully outdated as her stockings and billed hats that she continued to wear until her death. dorothy had many adventures and took many brave stands. i'd like to read to you a small

part from the book about what i think was her most bravest -- her bravest endeavor and shining hour. that was one of her trips to mississippi in 1936. i want to remind you all this is in today's -- this is in today's hipster mississippi where people go to listen to stay in fancy hotels and drink booze. this is dixiecrat mississippi. this is where the united states senator for a long time was as a eastland and he stood barrier to any progressive civil rights legislation. his father actually led a lynch party and he lashed one of his own sharecroppers. a woman who was his girlfriend, torturing both of them and making sure the man had to watch

as his loved one died first. it must have been awful because he actually stood trial for it which was almost unheard of. he of course got acquitted. as lyndon johnson once said there is america, there is this self, and that -- there is the south, and then there is mississippi. the posters went up, and churches, on crate myrtle trees and a long rotting walls of one-room school houses all over the mississippi delta, addressed to the colored people, written in large letters as if my a huckster announcing the arrival of the traveling circus. notice, colored people. come to a clinic for health advice. the anonymous author promised a

genuine lady doctor from washington dc. dorothy ferebee and her staff of trained colored assistance who would treat the sick of their race. mississippi health project was coming to town. lord knows the colored people of bolivar county need their help. populationest of the claw their way out of the great depression, blacks in the delta still suffered the same miserable existence they always had with no end in sight. most african-americans in the delta worked the land as tenant farmers or sharecroppers. akin to modern day slavery. entire families earned the sub of $50 a year, sometimes less. farmworkers lived on the most fertile ground on earth but their diet contained almost no fruits or vegetables.

the landowners refused to allow them to use the valuable acreage to cultivate small gardens. sold ate foods were not the plantation commissary. the only store that would accept their stores. they suffer disease that should not have been seen since the 19th century. the health team battled more than the disease. believe in superstitions ran as deep as believe in the baptist church and god. teabags on your eyes to cure the common cold. there was an abundance of ignorance and absence of joy. some had no idea how old their own children were. others didn't know their own names, first or last. on seeing the children of the

delta, we had the opportunity again and again to strengthen our conclusion that children and mississippi don't smile. blacks in the deep south in the 1930's were prohibited from voting, eating in restaurants or did -- or drinking at water fountains. african-americans constitute a percent of the state of theissippi and 75% of residents of bolivar county but they had no mainstream life. they crowded into shacks or slums on the edge of town. they sat in the back of the bus. they had no chance at jobs providing a decent living. a black man called the white man server and the white man responded by calling him boy. for many of the tenant farmers and sharecroppers, some

descendent from slaves who once worked the same fields, dorothy's clinic was the first health care. some of their children had never used a toothbrush and cry because their jaws ached from decay. tearsothy and her falling -- and her volunteers made her preparation for this, their anxiety grew. the output cap alpha rority -- the kappa alpha sorority sent funds to send them to mississippi in 19 35. the black press held it as a triumph

landowners pulled up the welcome mat when dorothy arrived, refusing to allow the workers near the medical team. it was not until she drove from farm to farm to explain she was there to provide health care, not organizing unions or advocating for civil rights, that all but one owner relented, but even then, the owners would not let their workers off their land or out of their sight. dorothy was forced to bring the clinic to the patients by setting up shop directly on the cotton fields under the watchful eyes of overseers. a year later, in his office, not far from the whitewashed rozier davisdr. detweiler, the chief officer for health in the county, had his own headache over dorothy's

arrival. it was detweiler who printed those posters and made sure they got into the hands of the preachers. he knew all about holmes county the summer before, and he felt dorothyy and awe for when he received her letter telling him she wanted to try again. he vowed to help. using memos and meetings, he convinced mississippi officials all the way to jackson that the clinic was as beneficial for landowners as it was for the black sharecroppers. from his perspective, the arrival of the colored medical team was the best thing to happen to the country since fdr. landowners who disagreed were too blinded by bigotry to realize that healthy field hands meant more profits and allowing them to be treated by one of their own meant that local white doctors didn't have to deal with them. all detwiler had to do was to make them see the light. he was a longtime southerner and

land owner. the 58-year-old detwiler lived on the grove, one of the finest delta, within the 600 fertile acres producing king cotton. he was a wealthy man. war, slavesivil waited on his ancestors, and in the years since, paid black attended to his plan tation. the doctor early on shed whatever ingrained biases he may have had against the negro. as a young physician before world war i supported by rockefeller brothers funding, he engaged in research to stamp out yellow fever, and his intellectual world expanded well beyond the steamy streets of cleveland, mississippi. on the dr.'s was a motto that he

aspired to live by, neither lick look up to the rich or down to the poor. in 1936, the entire country was parched. given that dorothy was likely to arrive in the middle of a heat be theetwiler planned to first to invite her on his property for a tall glass of iced tea, and better yet, dinner, and he would make sure did -- word would get around. if that wouldn't set an example for other owners, nothing would. and washington, d.c., where dorothy lived and practiced medicine, she was busy could join her husband and project volunteers to lend their cars to carry the team and supplies 1000 miles into the deep south. before the new deal public works projects were in full swing, mississippi was so poor, there were few miles of paved road.

pay for repairs in case of blown axles? there were some last-minute departures from the medical team. dorothy was close to losing her mind. a year before when she was about to go to holmes county, she boldly stated, i am not discouraged. i will do everything i can single-handedly if necessary, but as it turned out, she didn't have to go alone. she and her health team gathered in washington on a hot july morning, loaded up their cars, and drove in a caravan to mississippi and into history. thank you. [applause] if you have any questions about

dorothy or the book or anything, i would be happy to take a few minutes to answer them. >> [indiscernible] the obituary that i described in 1980, ied my talk read that obituary when i was a young reporter in washington, d.c., and the whole time i read it, i said, who is this lady? why haven't i heard of her? and wanted to write about her then. -- there was not as much interest back then. i was young and inexperienced, and i don't think i would've written a very good book. my life went on a different path. after i wrote a textbook on domestic violence, i thought, i think i can do this. i googled her and figured somebody must have. when nobody else did, i decided i was going to do it.

years. about seven between working full-time and writing full-time -- yes? because ioing to say, am a member of out for cap alpha alpha, she is very well thought of. the first thing a friend of mine said was, we should tell the sorority. i think it's a moment of pride. as someone who teaches history and teaches about the good doctors that went into mississippi in the 60's. the sorority was always so proud to say, we did this in the 1930's, and it does give meaning in the civilpt

rights movement. they were aware in the 1930's had a lote's health to do with their ability to survive. truman, he iswith saying that health is a human right, so they are very conscious of all of that. diane: one of the people who went with dorothy was a woman named marjorie holloman. she was married to a federal judge named barrington parker. her son who i spoke with is a judge in new york, and she was a beautiful writer. she became sort of the secretary, if you will, of the health project. she went for four summers. she picked up on exactly what you said. she wrote in a retrospective in the 1970's that by going to mississippi in the 1930's, the

doctor and her team were the stalking horses, if you will, they foreshadowed the freedom the voting rights movement that came 20 or 30 years down the line. she was a pioneer in so many think,nd that one, i being the most important. >> thank you so much for the fabulous talk. i look forward to reading your book. does she keep journals or diaries? are her papers collected? does she have relatives now, children? papersall of dorothy's are at howard university. there are also other papers of -- thethe national archive of black women's history w, nows a part of the ncn

owned by the national park service, and those are the records during the four years that she was the president, but also, she was on the board for many years. interestingly enough, did dorothy keep journals? no. as a matter of fact, in 17 feet of papers, there is not one word about her marriage, her children, her friends, her mom. urnal she ever kept was a 150-plus-page journal, which is a gold mine, when she accompanied mary claude bassoon to the founding of the united nations, the founding conference, in the spring of 1945 in san francisco. five away, she got to go on that

because she was married -- by the way, she got to go on that because she was married to bassoon's physician. she jumped on the train to new york and was so excited, she didn't bring a pad with her. she said she managed to score a and she from somebody, follows the train all the way to san francisco. it's amazing. the nightting there that somebody holds up a newspaper signaling the end of the war in europe. she is hobnobbing with nelson rockefeller and molotov. she is a wonderful reporter. when someone is speaking in french, her simmons college french comes in handy, because she takes notes in flawless french, but the long answer to

your brief question is, she didn't keep any personal journals or diaries. everything has to be pieced together by inference. her daughter died at age 18. her son only lived another year after she lived. 51 of pancreatic cancer. his wife died of an abdominal cancer years later. he had four children, two of whom died in adulthood. there were two adult children who remained alive. a strange person knocks on their door and said, i read grandmas obituary 30 years ago, will you help me, and they did. they invited me into their attics where i found photographs that are in the book that are just priceless. they were quite wonderful.

l. farebee has some distant relationship to dorothy ferebee, but she isn't sure what it was, because her mom died as a child. i never found how that connection worked. anyone else? a lady in the back? i am doing some research on african-american women who should be in the history books but aren't. one of the things that i've been doing is, i have friends in an african-american church in boston, and so for women's day, of somebody a story they had never heard of, and now they are doing research. we do this program together on women's day. the first time we did that, i

will never forget, one of the women came to me afterward and us., nobody ever told diane: it's an important story and amazing story. i think about the fact that dorothy ferebee defies all odds and is become a doctor delivering babies, teaching medical students, running her own private practice, and by the way, when you were a young doctor at howard in the 1920's, you also had to ride the ambulance at night. that was also part of your job. she's doing all this, and then she has time to speak out every night on one injustice or another? this woman is unbelievable. look at her. she's beautiful, and she is always dressed to the height of fashion. there's nothing this woman can't do. unfortunately, she gets attacked because her

children ended up having a bad time of it. think about this though. i really struggled with this in the book. we don't necessarily say that men are failures when they are out saving the world and their children and up not so great. dorothy takes a harder hit on this because she is a woman. interestingly enough, about a year before she dies, the national endowment for the programes put on a about women and african-american women in particular, and poor dorothy, she can barely walking out she has congestive heart programfailure. she gets herself up to the podium, and she is asked the question, what has been the harder prejudice to overcome, being black or being a woman? without missing a beat, she said, being a woman.

she said women have been so -- i'm not quoting it exactly -- women have had such a hard road of it, they have no confidence anymore. nothing made her crazier then the idea that women couldn't do everything. that was so important to her. her granddaughter in law was a cello player and needed $14,000 for one of her first cellos, and without asking dorothy, because she never would have asked, dorothy volunteered this money for her because it was so important for her to support her gift.aughter-in-law's she always wanted women to be doing something. that was so important to her. >> thanks very much.

as people know, there are books for sale. diane: thank you all very much. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] as people know, there are books for sale. diane: diane: what a great audience. >> you are watching american history tv, 48 hours of programming on american history every weekend on c-span3. follow us on twitter @cspanhisto ry for information on our schedule and to keep up with the latest history news. >> all weekend, american history tv is featuring hartford, connecticut. located in the middle of the state, hartford began as a trading post on the connecticut river in the 19th -- 1600s. the town was incorporated in 1754. cities to her staff -- tour

staff visited many sites. learn more about hartford all weekend on american history tv. >> here we are in harriet beecher stowe's home in hartford, connecticut. we invite you to visit. the are standing today in sto we's front parlor. when you visit here, you sit down in this parlor and share a conversation about issues and experiences. stower was born harriet beecher in litchfield, connecticut, and through her life, she lived in cincinnati, brunswick, maine, andover, massachusetts, and then she and her husband retired to be near her sisters in hartford. in hartford, they had two houses. first in the middle of the civil war, she built her dream house, her glamorous