Sharon Brangman (SB) and Jenna Lester (JL)
SB: I was probably about 10 years old and I had already decided I was going to be a doctor. But the guidance counselor put me into typing, home economics. And I came home with my books and Grandmother was like, ’Oh, no way.’ And I remember she went up to the school and said, ’I want my daughter transferred so she could go to college.’
JL: Tell me about your medical school experience.
SB: There was one professor, he would take a picture of an old Negro League baseball player holding a bat and start talking about the muscles using black dialect. He would show us Playboy centerfolds when he was talking about anatomy. And when you were taking a really hard test, he would walk behind, linger over your shoulder. And he had this horrible pipe. You’d hear a little puff sound and smell this smoke come over you. And he would do that to all the black students. So this was the classroom.
And I remember my mother telling me, ’It doesn’t matter if the teacher likes you or not. Your job is to learn.’ I mean, she didn’t go to college, but if she had come up in a different era, I think she would have been the first physician in the family.
JL: Mmhm.
SB: Was there a moment growing up when you realized what I did?
JL: Well, I remember knowing you were a doctor. I guess my earliest memory is when you came to the first-grade classroom to dissect cow hearts.
SB: Oh yeah, that’s right.
JL: And then you cut them open and you were, like, showing us the valves and the different chambers of the heart. And I was like, ’Wow, this is so cool.’
SB: [laughs]
JL: The typical person who has a long line of doctors in their family are, like, these often white men that I sit next to in class, whose father, grandfather, great-grandfather were doctors. And it’s cool to be a part of the same thing but it looks very different. To realize all the things that you had to go through, and that Grandma had to go through, to get me to where I am today. I feel like I’m working for a little bit more than just myself.
