When Alvin Poussaint, HMS professor of psychiatry, got the call from organizers of the third civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, he had just finished his psychiatry training. The demonstration would begin on March 21, 1965, following two marches earlier that month in which demonstrators had been brutally attacked.
“Fortunately, I moonlighted doing emergency medicine in clinics,” Poussaint said, without irony during his Robert H. Ebert Lecture at HMS. The talk, which took place in April, is an annual event named for the dean who led the School when it adopted affirmative action following the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
During the March, Poussaint sent demonstrators in need of care to segregated hospitals in black-owned funeral home hearses used as ambulances. “We were afraid, but we were unafraid,” he told an audience that included prospective students on campus for the revisitation weekend hosted by the Office of Recruitment and Multicultural Affairs.
“Many people were willing to risk their lives. We had to set fear aside and realize that we were on a heroic mission to bring about important change. We also felt we were reaching toward an attainable goal,” said Poussaint, who is also the HMS faculty associate dean for student affairs.
Led by King, the march helped win passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, but only after the two previous marches—marred by murders and vicious beatings—had rallied Americans across the country to support nonviolent measures.
“This short and critical time in American history left a powerful legacy,” said Poussaint, who, for more than 40 years, has also been a leader of diversity efforts at HMS. “It was transformative. That experience reinforced in me that—for whatever change you are trying to bring about—you have to be active. Nothing happens if you’re quiet.”
