Neurosurgeon Keith L. Black’s magnificent presentation last night at the renovated Mayme A. Clayton Library & Museum was promoted as a lecture that would bring pragmatic insights to issues blacks have with American healthcare.
First, though, the setting should be understood.
The throng of guests was ushered into an oldtime courtroom because the one-story building across from the Vets Auditorium is a reformed courthouse.
The unique and underappreciated Museum houses a lifetime collection of artifacts and documents pertinent to African American history, assembled by the late law librarian Mayme Clayton, Ph. D, and brought to life by her son Avery, who died suddenly two years ago.
Nostalgically, it could have been the 1940s again when a crowd streamed into the Mayme Clayton, so many curious people the overflow had to watch on a screen in a separate room.
Many came into the room toting a copy of Dr. Black’s book published last year, “Brain Surgeon: A Doctor’s Inspiring Encounters with Mortality and Miracles.”
What He Is Like
Chair of the Neurosurgery Dept. at Cedars-Sinai, Dr. Black, who is African American, soft-spoken and almost taciturn, diplomatically but urgently brought crucial family-raising principles to the forum,
While leaving no doubt about his medical intuitiveness, Keith Black philosopher, Keith Black father and Keith Black son were his most valuable contributions to the hungry audience.
Tall, spare, erudite, in a pinstriped suit and rimless eyeglasses, he appeared even professorial but succinct rather than preachy.
Dr. Black talked about racial prejudice, in college and elsewhere, his upbringing in the Old South just as Southern society and mores were undergoing earthquake changes, and his experience with raising his own son in fashionable Bel-Air.
He repeatedly decried the proclivities of seemingly the overwhelming majority of contemporary black children to seek to instinctively emulate professional basketball players and rappers, eschewing commitments to even vague links to academics.
Parental Obligations
Dr. Black implored parents and grandparents to influence their charges, to steer them toward the wide open fields of science and medicine. No unemployment here, he winked.
Without ever amplifying his paternal, firm but gentle tone, Dr. Black, on the eve of his 54th birthday, credited his parents for placing him on an unwavering career path, from childhood. Beyond the elder Blacks’ character, they were educators with an unclouded vision for their child. His father was the principal of an all-black school in Auburn, AL, and his mother, a first grade teacher.
He related a story of how he walked into the kitchen one day when he was 11 years old and his mother was cleaning a chicken. Fascinated, he asked her for the chicken’s heart. He studied in the way athlete-crazy peers treated a basketball or a baseball card. Taking note of his son’s new interest, his father brought home a turkey heart for him the following week, and an even larger cow heart the week after that, a compelling example of one dedicated family nurturing a child’s remote vision.
From this experience, he learned that he loved working with his hands, and he was terminally intrigued by what is inside of us, especially the complicated, delicate organ of the brain. “Neurosurgery is at the intersection of working with the hands and the brain,” he said.
Born in 1957, he came of age in the Deep South as Dr. King’s influence was widening and as massive upheaval and changes were under way.
Evidently a thoroughly dedicated student from the beginning, Dr. Black acknowledged encountering racial prejudice at the University of Michigan, known for its progressive culture. Studying his black audience, he said that people have a certain perception of minorities, but mainly African Americans, upon meeting. Okay, so what? Acknowledge and move on was his advice. That is what he said he did on the Michigan campus. He had a career to build.
Dr. Black’s life has been divided in two — going from an accomplished birth family to inventing an accomplished family of his own.
His wife, just as ambitious, is a urologist at USC. They have two children, a 22-year-old daughter (no problems) and a 20-year-old son.
The children grew up in one of the city’s most desirable enclaves, never have wanted for anything, including love and devoted protracted attention from both parents.
When Dr. Black’s son was 11, he abruptly caught the disease of Gotta Play in the NBA/Gotta Do Rap — he started dressing like boys who didn’t know better, who dropped their pants down low, and began howling rap.
Dr. Black and his wife immediately intercepted the danger signals and diligently reversed them.
Today, his son his doing admirably in a private university.
Parental monitoring and commitment not only work but are critical, Dr. Black said.
