ABSTRACT
FAMILY STRENGTH Mamie Katherine Phipps (b. April 18, 1917, d. August 11, 1983) experienced Ÿrsthand the value of a strong family and community. Born in 1917 in Hot Springs, Arkansas, she was the daughter of a prominent physician, Harold H. Phipps, and Katie Florence Phipps, a homemaker. Like all children in the United States at the time, she attended a racially segregated school. In Hot Springs there was one White school and one Black school, from Ÿrst through twelfth grade. The schools were located at opposite ends of town so that many students passed each other on the way to their respective schools. Racial tension erupting into Ÿghts was not uncommon. In this environment, Phipps recalled developing a protective armor that she carried with her at all times, but she was also aware that her position as the daughter of a well-respected physician (her father also managed a resort hotel for vacationers) accorded her certain privileges not extended to other Blacks in the community. As Lal (2002) pointed out, Black physicians, like Black lawyers, were extremely rare in the Ÿrst half of the 20th century, with the ratio of Black physicians to the Black population as a whole a meager 1 in 3,194. The Phipps family was privileged with respect to class, but this did
not mean they were immune to the racism that was all-pervasive in their small southern town.
