Los Angeles Promenade of Prominence: “Walk of Fame” 1988 — a Legacy of the Heart

By Dr. James A. Mays

James A. Mays, MD, deserves the recognition a CNN Hero, because he is a unique medical doctor and person in providing medical of the body while giving hope as a role and motivator to the citizens of Los Angeles, especially its youth. He is called the Dr. Welby of the ghetto. He has been named the Doctor of the year in Los Angeles and Watts. He is a 1965 graduate of the University of Arkansas and was named Alumnus of the Year, Community Affairs, in 1993. His community education on high blood pressure resulted in an editorial written by him in the Los Angeles Times titled Salt and Soul Food revolutionized thinking on ethnic foods transfer as a etiology for heart disease, high blood pressure, and obesity; he awakened the nation during his national medical speaking engagements and appearance in the national media, picture, and print. He traveled the nation, speaking, while serving as the chief of cardiology as a young thirty-one-year-old physician at the new Martin Luther King Hospital in Los Angeles from 19721976. His nocturnal AIDS education walks and education to street corners and motels, educating prostitutes, street people, and youth (1980 to present)are noteworthy. He cofounded the United High Blood Pressure Foundation and presented the first of a series of telethons. He later became chancellor of the Technical Health Career schools (19801985) while in private practice as a primary care physician with three medical offices in South Los Angeles for thirty-five years to the present.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 31, 2015
• ISBN: 9781499081329

Dr. James A. Mays

James A. Mays is a true renaissance man: poet, scholar, popular novelist, songwriter, cardiologist, and civil leader. His individual achievements are such that he was the recipient of the George Washington Medal. Other notable recipients of this prestigious award are Barbara Jordan and the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. Mays has written several songs, one of which, Happy Birthday Mama, was recorded by Bill Cosby. He also co-wrote several songs with H.B Barnum. As an author he is responsible for nine novels, including his latest Trapped, which is in preparation to become a movie. An earlier trilogy, Strivers, is being developed as a miniseries. Dr. Mays is widely recognized as the founder of community problem-solving programs such as the Adopt-A-Family endowment. He is currently involved in several campaigns promoting drug and AIDS awareness and giving assistance to the homeless. He has frequently appeared on television, featuring on shows including “The Today Show, The Phil Donahue Show, on radio, such as the Voice of America and has had articles published in LIFE, Newsweek, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, and Ebony. Dr. Mays, who was decorated as combat physician in Vietnam, is a lone parent with four sons.

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Copyright © 2015 by Dr. James A. Mays.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2015901369

ISBN:      Hardcover                    978-1-4990-8133-6

                Softcover                     978-1-4990-8134-3

                eBook                          978-1-4990-8132-9

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Rev. date: 01/30/2015

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Contents

 Chapter 1 The Commencement

 Chapter 2

 POP Walk of Fame

 Chapter 3 The Heart

 Chapter 4

 Chapter 5

 Chapter 6 Special Honors Nominee

 Chapter 7 Promenade of Prominence

 Chapter 8 Protecting the Community Police

 Chapter 9 Promenade of Prominence

 Chapter 10

 Chapter 11

Dedication

This book is dedicated to our only sister,

Delores Mays Broughton, the wise, loving matriarch of the family.

She is the Rock of our family.

Delores Mays Broughton

Delores is our only sister in a family of four boys. She is the third eldest and leader of the family. After our mother died at the age of ninety-three, she became our family matriarch.

Delores has one son, Dr. Steven Broughton, who was recently appointed as the board of directors of the Arkansas University systems. Yes, also Arkansas has changed. Her grandson Steven Broughton, Jr. is a third year medical student at the University of Arkansas Medical School. She earned a master’s in library science from the University of Illinois.

Delores is the Rock of the family and the glue that holds the family together. She is loved and respected by many admirers and, of course, her three brothers.

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Thanks to my young, brilliant, caring doctors

Dr. Stella Field, Dr. David Kheradyar, and Dr. Daryl Houston

Thanks!

Special thanks to, Eliza Reese, Kris, Breann, Donald, Ericka, Marcellus, Tony, D’sani

Thanks to Jackie Jaro’s typing service.

The Gold Star Mothers Memorial Monument

Pine Bluff is a town in Arkansas, which is a central southern state. It was a typical southern town with a population of thirty-nine thousand people. Blacks and whites were not treated equally. Blacks had to sit at the back of the bus. They had separate water fountains and toilets. The schools were unequal, with black schools being at the bottom of the pit. Justice was also unequally handed out at the Jefferson County Court house located in Pine Bluff. When there were disputes between blacks and whites, the courts always favored the whites and on one occasion that I remember involved the Tuckers brothers in a dispute with white farmers. The sheriff had to fire a shoot in the air from his shotgun to prevent a lynching while standing at the door of the jail house, similar to that dramatized in movies. The only employment available to blacks was in the cotton fields. King cotton was the king. The slogan on the license plate of Arkansas read The Land of Opportunity. Most blacks spoke quietly, And the first one you get, split. Most split to St. Louis, Chicago, and Detroit, like Mexicans, coming across the border.

I was about five years old, with wooly hair and bare chest; all I knew to do was play, mostly by rolling an old used tire on King and Cypress streets. The dirt roads caused the dust to accumulate on my body, with the hot sun causing me to sweat with streaks to form and run down my face and chest. I was the youngest of five children of Edna Clara Mays and Talmadge Mays. I had one sister by the name of Delores and three elder brothers. Papa was a rolling stone and was soon gone. Mama wanted her children to escape the hardship through education; she preached and pressed education on a daily basis. The answer came in that the black AM&N College was located in Pine Bluff. The broad of directors had appointed a bright young twenty-eight-year-old black man to become its president. He was the youngest president of a college in the United States. His name was Lawrence A. Davis. We affectionately referred him as prexy. He was smart, smooth, and articulate. His broad of directors was primarily rich white farmers, who refer to him as Lawrence, rather than Dr. Davis, although he was a PhD. Many of them had only a high school education. He had a way about him of respect that he could control them and most situations. He was the black spokesman for blacks’ causes in Pine Bluff and most of southeast Arkansas. He was our greatest role model.

My mother was very religious and worked at the St. John AME church most the time, which meant we went to church often. She also felt that she should do something in the community; she therefore organized a group of young blacks and formed the Negro Youth Organization. The group did outstanding causes in the community and was well respected by both blacks and whites. They had the first black youth radio show on KOTN Radio. Their good deeds were reported in the Pine Bluff commercial newspaper. They formed the first black boys club and later the first black YMCA. Mama Mays is loved by both black and whites. She was like Ms. Daisy Bates who led the famous Little Rock Nine in the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. I met Ms. Bates and the Little Rock Nine when I became president of the student body of the black Merrill High School in Pine Bluff. I offered moral support as the Nine students went through hell by the hostile white mobs that they faced. It became so hostile that President Eisenhower had to send in federal troops. Many black people also said, I like Ike.

World War II was the cause of suffering and death of many white soldiers but many black soldiers also were killed. The white soldiers and their mothers had monuments called The Gold Star Mothers Monument. Black mothers and soldiers had no such honor. The Negro Youth Organization researched names of the black soldiers and mothers and raised funds to purchase a granite stone monument. The stone contained the soldiers and their mothers’ names as well as names of the founder, Mrs. Edna Mays, President Roland Banks, Barbara Dale Howard, Delores Mays, and several others. The stone was eventually moved to the front of the court house located at the end of Main Street in Pine Bluff. It can be seen from nearly a mile away. It is the only monument displayed on Main Street, and it is a historic symbol.

The black Gold Star Mothers Monument is as important as the Lincoln and Washington monuments, the Martin Luther King Tribute, and the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC, to the black people of Pine Bluff, Arkansas. The Gold Star Mothers Memorial Monument is seen by all those who visit Pine Bluff. The contribution became the motivation and concept of the granite-slab stones on the sidewalk in Los Angeles (Watts) called the Promenade of Prominence walk of fame.

Other Thoughts in the mind of Mays

Arkansas

The Land of Opportunity

(Written in 1952 while a junior high school student)

Reproduced in the Pine Bluff Commercial Newspaper

Updated Newspaper 2007

Arkansas, the State of the Middle south

Where the corn and cotton sprouts

Where the trees and grass grow so green

A place fit for a Queen,

The Arkansas River flows so great

Winding thru life a serpentine snake

Many times things are a little rough

But we united love in Pine Bluff.

Everyone is in everybody’s business

But that’s the way we show care in the Village

Young Blacks can escape due to knowledge

Because of the presence of AM&N College (UAPB).

Family role models and other caring people

then and will save us

Foremost of them is mother Edna Clara Mays

And College President, Lawrence D. Davis.

Towns such as Little Rock, Pine Bluff, Hope and Benton

The State is now progressive and famous because

of Former Governor and President Bill Clinton

From the place that I may leave, but never roam

Because you see … Pine Bluff, Arkansas is my home.

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May the work I have done speak for me

Dr. Lawrence Arnette Prexy Davis, Sr.

July 4, 1914—June 5, 2004

Lawrence Arnette Davis, Sr. was born in McCrory, Arkansas, on July 4, 1914, as the only child of the late Virgil and Pawnee Davis. He received nurturing and support from his late grandmother, Mrs. Emma Janie Brown, with whom he lived most of his young life.

A man of notable athletic ability, he played baseball with adults in the Negro League at the age of twelve. When he was fourteen, he moved to Pine Bluff to complete his secondary education at Merrill High School where he graduated as valedictorian. He earned a BA degree in English at AM&N College, a master’s degree in English at the University of Kansas, and a doctorate in higher education administration at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. He continued his study at various educational institutions across the country and abroad. He has several honorary degrees to his credit as well as appointments to presidential commissions under the administration of Presidents Truman, Johnson, and Nixon.

After being appointed president of AM&N College in 1943 at the age of twenty-eight, he was the youngest college president in the country. During his tenure, the college flourished in enrollment growth and physical plant expansion and received its first North Central Association accreditation. His dreams for AM&N were realized with support from the then governor Sidney Sid McMath for whom he had much admiration and respect.

He served as president of AM&N for thirty years and as the first chancellor of the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff (UAPB) for one year. His impact on students was so profound during his era that they affectionately referred to him as Prexy, which became synonymous with his name to everyone. After his tenure at UAPB, he served as president of Laney College at Oakland, California, for seven years. He enjoyed working with senior citizens as a consultant for the city of Oakland after his retirement from Laney College.

While all of his organizational affiliations and recognitions are too numerous to mention, some of them include, Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc., Sigma Pi Phi Boule, Prince Hall Masons, Order of the Elks, and the Twentieth Century Club. A recognition for which he is well noted is his honor as Arkansas Man of the Year in 1967. He has been awarded many plaques, citations, and honors for his educational, civic, community, and organizational leadership and service. As part of his civic responsibility, he worked to acquire needed funding to complete the Pine Bluff Civic Center and assisted with the plans for construction of the Pine Bluff Convention Center. His additional contributions to the development of the city of Pine Bluff are numerous.

A prolific writer, orator, and avid reader, he kept a sharp mind until the end of his life. He continued to enjoy solving crossword puzzles, watching the Chicago Cubs baseball games, reading, discussing national and international events, and watching news shows on cable television. He remained the patriarch of the Davis family and spent the last three years of his life close to his children in Pine Bluff.

His legacy leaves five sons: Lawrence, Jr., Larnell, Michael (Pine Bluff, AR), Ronald (Grady, AR), and Lauren (Ann Arbor, MI) and four daughters: Janice Kearney (Pine Bluff, AR); Gail Thigpen (Peoria, IL); Pawnee Davis (Oxon Hill, MD); Zalana Toomer (St. Augustine, FL); four sisters: Cleophus Johnson (Stuttgart, AR); Helen Summerville (Little Rock, AR); Gladys Williams; and Lynette Bagsby (Los Angeles, CA); eleven grandchildren, and thirteen great-grandchildren. He is preceded in death by a daughter, Sharon, and a granddaughter, Catherine, and brothers, Virgil Davis and Josiah Davis, and a sister, Reesie Humphrey. He also leaves a host of nieces, nephews, and many other relatives and friends that loved him dearly.

Historically Black colleges and universities continue to play a vital role by adding to the diversity and caliber of the Nation’s higher education system. Furthermore, these institutions remind all Americans of our obligations to uphold the principles of justice and equality enshrined in our Constitution.

—President William Jefferson Clinton

 Chapter 1

The Commencement

The origin of dreams, compassion, and creativity and giving from the earthly nature of a southern town and its culture—Mama!

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A Legacy of the Heart

Mama

Mrs. Edna Clara Mays

The Mama’s boy stereo-type oftentimes carries negative, sometimes sinister, connotations. I am a Mama’s boy. I feel that every chick that emerged from an egg, every kangaroo that resided in its mother’s pouch, or amoeba that divided and formed a new life cannot appreciate the love and respect of the woman whose womb that protected, nourished, and loved my parasitic existence.

My father’s chromosomes equally formed the helix that intertwined with his multiple genetic codes about my mother. But it is my mother that formed me into a person.

The theory that a one-parent sibling cannot enjoy complete love and motivation becomes theory only due to my mother.

Madame Mary McLeod Bethune, Eleanor Roosevelt, Joan of Arc, and other great women in history must walk one stride behind her. She is a Jewish mother with soul. Mama has the unique ability to push, scold, love, and motivate during the same time.

Faith in God and the words of his power are placed in their proper perspective. However, with the reminder that God does for those that do for themselves.

My brother’s keeper and the philosophy related to: if Jesus should knock on your door, would you answer, was instilled and remains. I suppose that I desire to help those representing Jesus knocking at my door.

To God Almighty, I constantly thank you for all your blessings. I thank you most of all for the continued privilege to have my mama and for being a Mama’s boy.

A Legacy of the Heart

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Mother

Edna Clara Mays

Edna Clara A. Mays, our mother, probably had more influence on our family, and particularly me, than any other person that we have had contact. She was the hand that rocked the cradle and that provided us with the motivation and inspiration to be successful. The success of her five children can be directly contributed to her zeal. Her genes are like steel in that she was on this earth for ninety-three years, able to walk about, reason, and visualize the world before us, even without eyeglasses. She lived with me during her last five years, secure in her youngest son’s home, knowing that she was being cared for in appreciation for all that she had done for me personally and for her children. The support that I received from my sister, Delores, my elder brother, Eddie and her friend and my girlfriend, Jewel Antoinette, her maid in her final years secured her in knowing that her children are repaying her in gratitude for what she had done for us. Edna Clara was/is a great lady who left a legacy for us to strive to become successful. She is in heaven now, looking down on her children, knowing that she has produced five successful children, all of whom have been educated much beyond that expected of a mother raising five children, practically alone. Of the litter, two have become outstanding medical doctors, two have received master’s degrees, and one attended and obtained success in college. The legacy that she has left will not only allow her five children to be successful but also the multitude of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The Mays Family

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An Arkansas African American Legacy of Medicine

Many metropolitan capital cities of 1950s south were known not only for their southern charm and splendor but also for racial prejudice. Many had been exposed by the media, especially television, with sensational, mighty pictures of injustice to blacks. Little Rock, the capital of Arkansas, was not among them until the integration of Lillie White Central High School and courage of the Little Rock Nine students captured the world’s media.

Arkansas’ state motto was the Land of Opportunity, but blacks felt it was for Whites only. The Central High School integration process revealed the deep prejudice, hatred, anger, and violence of white mobs. Little Rock and the state had tension filled like ominous dark cloud of racial fear like the one of state’s many farmers. It was likened to hot dry desert for most blacks.

However, there stood an oasis of medical education and opportunity located in Little Rock that provided equal medical opportunities also for qualified blacks. That institution is the University of Arkansas School of Medicine. A poor black family of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, some forty miles from Little Rock, led by a strong matriarch mother, Mrs. Edna Clara Mays. Mrs. Mays, a high school graduate known for her community life, works in Pine Bluff. She was the one-parent-family leader and motivation of a divorced and particularly abandoned family. However, strong religious faith, belief, moral principles, and motivation for education for her children became the stimulus to their success.

Edward (Eddie) Mays was accepted to attend the white medical school in Little Rock. He graduated in 1959. Edward had to take numerous routes to school to avoid the angry white mobs violently protesting school integration. He only felt safe when he reached the secured welcoming doors of the medical school oasis.

He started a unique legacy. He was followed, at the institution, by his younger brother, Dr. James Mays, his nephew, Dr. Stephen Broughton, and his son, Stephen Broughton II, a freshman at the medical school, with many more to follow.

Dr. Edward Mays was not the first black graduate for the medical school, but was one of the first. The first black was Dr. Erby Jones. The fact that at this time three generations of blacks from one family attended the school was a first for the Arkansas Medical School.

The three generations of physicians or potential doctors are also graduates of AM&N College, a traditional black college located in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, now titled the University of Arkansas-Pine Bluff (UAPB). Their graduations were the first three generations at that institution also. The three generations of doctors and students have made many contributions to our nation in the military of the United States, Pine Bluff, the state of Arkansas, California, and the world.

This poor family, as represented by flowers, grew strong as role models to youth, especially black youth, successfully spreading the oasis of medical knowledge and opportunity.

The University of Arkansas, School of Medicine

James A. Mays, MD

Dear James,

Thank you for the continued interest in me and my extended family. If you are on the Internet, you can go to the University of Arkansas system and scroll down and see the trustees. Steve’s picture is right there on the list with all the white millionaires. He is so proud because of what he has become. Mama was a real special person. She did everything to make sure that we knew how special we really were.

Love you, your sister

Delores (Broughton)

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This Arkansas Traveler certificate represents the friendliness and hospitality that Arkansans extend to out-of-state visitors who have contributed to the progress, enjoyment,