Pane 10 ----J Ms erysFeePes etmer3 Otbr ,21


President Barack Obama fist bumps Vice President Joe Biden, with Sen-
ior Advisor Valerie Jarrett looking on, before a meeting in the Oval Of-
fice, Sept. 16, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)


1-1 TM


racial abuse by some elderly and dementia patients


Caregivers face
by J. Cunningham, TG
 When Certified Nursing Assistant
Brenda Chancy saw a nursing home
patient sprawled on the floor, her first
instinct was to go to her aid.
 Instead. Chancy had to find a white
health care worker to tend to the res-
ident, because the woman insisted
that no African-American certified
nursing assistants care for her. The
rule at Chaney's then-employer, the
Plainfield Healthcare Center -- a
long-term care facility that houses
hundreds of residents in the suburbs
of Indianapolis -- was one of racial
preference, where patients could re-
quest members of a certain race assist
them, while preventing others from
doing so.
Plainfield tolerated requests from


Nation's first Black doctor finally gets a headstone


 White descendants of the nation's
 first professionally trained African-
 American doctor gathered in a ceme-
 tery last weekend to dedicate a
 tombstone at the unmarked grave
 where he was buried in 1865.
 "Right now I feel so connected in a
 new way, to actually be here," said
 Antoinette Martignoni, the 91-year-
 old great-granddaughter of James
 McCune Smith. "I take a deep breath,
 and I thank God, I really do. I am so
 glad to have lived this long."
 Smith, born in New York City in
 1813, wanted to be a doctor but was
 denied entry to medical schools in
 the United States. He earned a degree
 from the University of Glasgow in
 Scotland, then returned to New York
 to practice. Besides being a doctor,
 he was celebrated in his lifetime as a
 writer and an anti-slavery leader.
 Although scholars have written
books about Smith, who set up a
medical practice in lower Manhattan
and became the resident physician at
an orphanage, his descendants knew
nothing about him until recently.
The story of why Smith was nearly
overlooked by history and buried in
an unmarked grave is in part due to
the centuries-old practice of light-
skinned blacks passing as white to
escape racial prejudice. Smith's
mother had been a slave; his father
was white. Three of his children lived


 ., .. 0






 Antoinette Martignoni, right, places a flower atop the new tombstone
of her great-grandfather Dr. James McCune Smith, the nation's first pro-
fessionally trained African-American doctor, as Martignoni's daughter,
Elizabeth Strazar, second from right, looks on during a ceremony hon-
oring Smith, in the Brooklyn, New York. Smith's gravesite had been un-
marked since his death in 1865. Dr, McCune is shown in the inset.


to adulthood, and they all apparently
passed as white, scholars say.
 Greta Blau, Smith's great-great-
great-granddaughter, made the con-
nection after she took a course at
Hunter College on the history of
blacks in New York. She did some re-
search and realized that James Mc-
Cune Smith the trailblazing black
doctor was the same James McCune
Smith whose name was inscribed in
a family Bible belonging to Mar-


tignoni, her grandmother.
Her first response was, "But he was
black. I'm white."
 Blau, of New Haven, Conn., con-
cluded that after Smith's death, his
surviving children must have passed
as white, and their children and
grandchildren never knew they had a
black forbear, let alone such an illus-
trious one.
Blau contacted all the Smith descen-
dants she could find and invited them


to join her for the ceremony dedicat-
ing the tombstone at Smith's grave at
Brooklyn's Cypress Hills Cemetery.
Eleven of Smith's descendants went
to lay flowers at the cemetery, the
final resting place of other notables
including baseball player Jackie
Robinson and actress Mae West.
 Blau's aunt Elizabeth Strazar said
she had grown up believing her eth-
nic heritage was English, Irish, Scot-
tish and French.
 "Now I can say I'm English, Irish,
African-American and French, which
I feel very proud of," she said.
Joanne Edey-Rhodes, the professor
whose course led Blau to discover
her ancestor, said Blau had written
about Smith in her paper for the
course.
"She was writing about this person
and didn't realize that that was her
very own ancestor," Edey-Rhodes
said.
Edey-Rhodes, who's black, said that
to be black in America in Smith's
time "was a horrible condition."
 "Black people were a despised
group, and to many we still are a de-
spised group in the world," she said.
"I think that it is so important that at
this time in history, that a family that
is classified as white can say, 'I have
this African-American ancestor,' and
be able to do it without any shame,
without having to hide it."


residents who did not want African-
American's to care for them, under
the belief that they were legally obli-
gated to do so, according to court
documents.
 In fact, on Chaney's daily call sheet
next to one patient's name was
"Prefers No Black CNA's." White
certified nursing assistants also in-
formed Chaney that she couldn't go
into certain patient's rooms or assist
them because she was black, said
Denise LaRue, Chaney's lawyer.
LaRue said Plainfield administration
never told her otherwise.
 "It bothers you inside," Chaney said
from her home in Indianapolis, Ind.
"You wonder, 'Because I'm the color
I am, I can't go in there and help this
lady?' And I can do just as much or


her law office in Indianapolis.
probably better than anybody there."
 Chaney said she was alarmed and
upset by Plainfield Healthcare Cen-
ter's policy, but went along with it be-
cause at the time she was putting her
son through college and needed the
income.
 "Of course, it affected me very
deeply inside," she said. "When I
thought about it, it made me sad. But
on the same token, I didn't want to
lose my job. Sometimes we have to
set aside our pride and go with the
rules. And that was one of the rules.
No blacks allowed."
 After three months, Chaney was
fired from Plainfield, allegedly for
cursing in front of a resident, a
charge that she denies. She then
lodged a complaint with the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commis-
sion, charging that her firing was
racially motivated and that Plain-
field's racial preferential policy,
among other issues, contributed to a
hostile work environment.
 The complaint led to a lawsuit
against Plainfield, where Chaney
contended that the nursing home vi-
olated her civil rights when they al-
lowed patients to bar workers from
providing healthcare based on race.
She also alleged that Plainfield ad-
ministration fired her because she
was black.
 A district court dismissed the case.
But in July the 7th U.S. Circuit Court
reversed the ruling on appeal, finding
that Chaney's civil rights had indeed


been infringed upon.
 "Plainfield told Chaney that it was
excluding her from work areas and
residents solely on account of her
race, thereby creating a racially-
charged workplace that poisoned the
work environment," the ruling states.
 According to a published report,
there have been at least two other
complaints of racial discrimination in
nursing homes. One in Indiana was
settled for $84,000 and in Montana
10 years ago, the state's Department
of Labor and Industry found that a
nursing home was wrong to reassign
a black health care worker to avoid
race-based clashes with patients who
were prejudiced.
 Robyn Stone, senior vice president
of research for the American Associ-
ation of Homes and Services for the
Aging, a Washington, D.C.-based or-
ganization that works to empower
and advocate for the aged, Stone said
cultural competency training is cru-
cial in nursing homes, as is support
to workers from nursing home ad-
ministration in matters of racial dis-
crimination.
 "The issues of cultural competence
are really significant, and they are
going to be even more significant in
the future," Stone said, adding,
"Nursing homes are increasingly
faced with, 'How do we actually
work on communication and care is-
sues that both address the client/care-
giver relationship, but also the
relationship between staff?'"


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Attorney Denise LaRue, right, and her client Brenda Chaney pose in


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September 30 October 6, 2010


Page 10 Ms. Perry's Free Press


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