The AMA honors a physician and civil rights activist.
The American Medical Association honored Robert Smith, MD, with the Medal of Valor Award for fighting
social injustice and providing health care to all Mississippi citizens during the civil rights era.
Smith was instrumental in the success of Brown’s Early Identification Program with his alma mater, Tougaloo College. He has supervised Brown medical students on rotation at Jackson clinics and recruited local high school students into medicine (see Brown Medicine, Spring 2007).
The honor is tinged with some irony. In 1963, Smith was among the physicians who picketed the AMA’s annual meeting in Atlantic City to demand that the organization remove all racial barriers to membership.
