Magnolia resident and retired urologist Lester Thompson signs a copy of his book ‘Lucky Medicine: A Memoir of Success Beyond Segregation’ at a book signing earlier this year hosted by his medical school alma mater, Indiana University School of Medicine.
Lester Thompson
Longtime Magnolia resident and retired physician Lester Thompson was not even born when his future profession was decided for him, and it was his given name that opened the door for him.
In “Lucky Medicine: A Memoir of Success Beyond Segregation,” Thompson, who retired from his urology practice after 37 years in 2012, shares how his father’s dream, his name and his own determination and hard work led him to persevere over encounters with racism and a racist society growing up in Indianapolis.
The book is both a coming-of-age story highlighting his experiences growing up in Indianapolis when segregation and Jim Crow laws were still in effect, as well as his journey to medical school, Thompson said.
A career chosen for him
It was Thompson’s father, Calvin, who decreed his future son would grow up to be a doctor after he was forced to give up that dream for himself when he was just a child. Thompson said his father was determined to become a doctor, although he was born in 1898 to a poor Black family in Nashville, Tenn., and the odds were stacked against him. Reality crushed young Calvin’s plans, however, when his father died, and he had to quit school to and earn money to help support his family when he was just a boy.
That was when he decided his future son, should he have one, would become a doctor instead.
“He didn’t really ask me if I wanted to be a doctor, he just told me that was what I was going to be,” Thompson said, adding he accepted his father’s dictate, in part because children were taught to heed their parents without question at the time, and because his father was a bit of an autocrat.
Although he didn’t know it until he was older, his father already had a plan in place for how his son would get to medical school. Thompson said his father owned a barbershop in the Indianapolis business sector that catered to businessmen, doctors, dentists and politicians, with whom he had built a strong network.
Thompson said one of his dad’s clients was a wealthy businessman whom Calvin had become good friends with. After hearing about Calivn’s desires for his yet unborn son to become a doctor someday, the businessman, Lazure Lester Goodman, said he would pay for his son’s entire education if Calvin named the boy after him. Just like that, Thompson received his name and the path to a future career set before him, and he hadn’t even been born.
Growing up during segregation
Not everything else was so easy, however. Thompson said he had a lot of barriers to overcome growing up because segregation and Jim Crow laws were still deeply entrenched in everyday life.
“Indiana, back in the ’40s and ’50s was not a progressive state,” Thompson said.
While the Supreme Court would not officially rule racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional until 1954 with Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Indiana lawmakers had actually decided in 1949 schools should begin to desegregate. Thompson’s began school in a segregated kindergarten, but his school had desegregated following the state’s decision, and in first grade, he was one of only a few Black children to attend school with white children. Other schools in the city and state were not so quick to desegregate, and Thompson said his best friend at the time still attended a segregated school, even though she did not live very far from the Thompsons. In fact, it took decades and a lawsuit before all Indiana schools were desegregated.
Thompson said Jim Crow was still very much alive and well when he was growing up, but Black children were taught by their families early on things they needed to pay attention to, such as phrases all steeped in racism, in order to get along.
“They taught us the rules and what happened when you broke the rules,” Thompson said. “We learned early on where we were welcome and where we weren’t.”
When Thompson was in eighth grade, however, he moved to a new school that forced him to challenge the rules. He said his school didn’t serve lunch and the only place he could get it was at a drug store considered to be on the “white side of town.” But Thompson said if he was going to eat lunch, he had no choice but to go there, sit at the counter and eat a sandwich. And while the owner made it clear he didn’t like it, he didn’t actually forbid the young boy from coming in and eating his lunch.
College days
Although Thompson began writing his book in 2017, he unofficially and unknowingly started it years before in college at Indiana University when he began keeping journals detailing his time in college, becoming a member of the fraternity Kappa Alpha Psi and his journey to medical school. He used those journals as the basis for his memoir later in life.
“I started keeping the journals because I thought college was going to be something really special,” Thompson said, adding in some ways it was. “I wanted to remember it the way I lived it.”
His experiences included the good, the bad and the funny.
They also detailed various encounters with racism buried in regular life, such as when his white classmates used a racial epithet in a joke before they qualified it by saying they didn’t mean him because they didn’t think of him that way.
Another notable occurrence took place during his medical school entrance interview. He said he already felt a little off center when he arrived wearing a sport jacket and tie only to see a room full of white men wearing suits and serious faces.
“Really, it was like cigarette smoke and anxiety just hung over the room,” Thompson said.
When it was his turn, he stood before two white men, one who never spoke, but just sat there with a disapproving look on his face, and the other who started things by asking Thompson whether he could dance. Although taken aback, Thomson said that he could, and then the man asked if he could dance two specific dances popular at the time, the Boogaloo and the Philly Dog. Again, Thompson said he could. Thompson said he didn’t know why he was asked those questions or what they had to do with medical school, but he wasn’t about to ask. He said he briefly wondered whether he was going to be asked to dance and thought, if it meant getting into medical school, he probably would.
Thompson was spared that indignity, but those two questions overshadowed the rest of the interview; he can’t remember anything else he was asked and left feeling very uncertain about his future.
“There were a lot of these little microaggressions, to use the terminology of today,” Thompson said.
Not all of Thompson’s college experiences were overshadowed by racism, however.
Thompson said he fondly remembers his fraternity brothers and their time in one of only three Black fraternities in America, adding they remind him of the characters seen in the 1979 classic “Animal House” but also served as one of the reasons he wanted to write his memoir.
Thompson said, while he hopes readers enjoy his memoir, he hopes it will serve as inspiration and motivation to young people, especially young people of color, to pursue and achieve their dreams, regardless of the challenges they face, and recognize and take the opportunities presented to them.
“The pathways to success when I was a college student were fewer or narrower because of racism than they are now, but I succeeded,” Thompson said.
He said, even though his pathway was aided by a generous benefactor, he still had to make the most of his opportunity and do the work so he could succeed in life.
“Now adays, the pathways to success are more numerous, but the old barriers are still there, but they can still be overcome,” Thompson said.
“Lucky Medicine: A Memoir of Success Beyond Segregation” can be purchased at the Magnolia Book Store and on Amazon.