What's in a name?
Why the Seay Wilson name?
Dr Hagalyn Seay Wilson was the first black female medical doctor in Montgomery back in 1958 and
the only one here for the first 20 of her 42 years of medical service.
A trailblazer by definition, activism was in her genes, as she was the daughter of a prominent civil rights activist, Solomon Seay who later succeeded Martin Luther King as the head of the Montgomery Improvement Association.
She ran voter registration drives from her medical office. She was one of the heroic medical practitioners who tended to the wounded amongst the marchers from Selma to Montgomery. She tended also to the injuries of the Freedom riders, being the only black physician on the scene.
In 1964, she stood alone as the black physician testifying before the U.S. Civil Rights Commission that St. Margaret’s Hospital in Montgomery, Alabama, discriminated against black physicians. As a result of her testimony, the Commission found that St. Margaret’s did discriminate on the basis of color which left St. Margaret’s liable for the loss of all federal funding. Her audacious testimony opened the door for black physicians receiving staff privileges in Montgomery hospitals - that meant privileges for you and I up till today.
Through all these, Dr Seay Wilson did not consider herself to be a feminist but her brilliance, humility, strength, sense of purpose, blunt practicality and organizational skills had her revered by all who the opporutnity to come across her path.
Dr Wilson died in 2006. She was aged 76.
Simply put, what a woman.
So when a group of women doctors met for the first time on the 10th of May, 2014, and broke bread together at Sommers Place restaurant, Montgomery, Alabama, the subject of what to call the gathering of like minded women arose. Why not dedicate the association to Dr Seay Wilson?
And thats what we did folks! That's the story!
CA
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