Who Does That?

PRESERVING COMMUNITY TOGETHER INITIATIVE

Dr. Viola Johnson Coleman . . .

I keep thinking about her age.

She graduated from Southern University in 1939. She was barely twenty.

The she taught at Grambling State University for five years. University level.

In her twenties, she was already standing in front of classrooms shaping minds. Then she took the MCAT.

“To my great surprise,” she said, “I passed.”

She applied to Louisiana State University Medical School in 1946—fully aware the state was segregated. She worked alongside NAACP attorneys, including Thurgood Marshall.

She entered Meharry Medical College and became a physician. All before she turned 30.

“Who does that?”

That is not luck. That is not accident. That is not someone waiting to be chosen.

That is interior wealth.

Her preparation was so undeniable that it shook a state. Her discipline exposed racist policy. Her excellence forced the system to respond.

Before she ever delivered babies, she delivered pressure to injustice.

And decades later, she would deliver me.