Celebrating Black History Month: Remembering Dr. George Dows Cannon (Part 2)
Dr. George Dows Cannon, second from the right, among his fellow elected officers of the General Alumni Association of Lincoln University.
If you missed Part 1 of this article in last week’s The Weekly, you can read it here.
I had never heard of Dr. George Dows Cannon until Professor Charbonneau contacted me about him, wanting to know more about what it meant for someone to serve as an elder in the Presbyterian Church. But Dr. Cannon is someone we should know about! Not just because he was an active member and leader at MAPC, but because of his civil rights leadership and his work on access to affordable health care. Here is more that Dr. Charbonneau shared about Dr Cannon’s work, accomplishments, and commitments:
He believed in affordable health care and was the founder (and first medical director) of the Upper Manhattan Medical Group.
He was a trustee and eventually President of the board of Trustees at Lincoln University for more than three decades. Lincoln University was the first degree-granting HBCU in the country, and was established by the Presbytery of New Castle, Pennsylvania.
He was the first Black M.D in three NY hospitals, but his main affiliation was with the Hospital for Joint Diseases.
He spearheaded a campaign in the 1940s to abolish the NY Jim Crow nursing school system where Black women were only admitted to two of the seven nursing schools the city maintained. He organized a significant campaign using radio, newspapers and public meetings.
He (and a friend) had the idea for the National Deliverance Day of Prayer of March 28, 1956, largely observed throughout the United States in support of the Montgomery bus strike (Adam C. Powell spearheaded this initiative, but the idea came from George D. Cannon – Powell confirms this in his autobiography “Adam by Adam”, 1971, p. 125)
Dr. Charbonneau also shared a beautiful letter Dr. Cannon wrote to his sister about his travels to the Holy Land and Europe while returning by ship across the Atlantic. His letter reveals the depth of his faith. The letter was published in the July 9, 1960 edition of The New York Recorder. Here are some excerpts:
“It is difficult to know where to begin. I have stood on the crater rim of a smouldering Mt. Vesuvius; I have stood on the Mount of Olives and gazed across the Valley of Jehoshaphat to the wall of the Holy City; I have stood in the flower drenched Garden of Gethsemane; . . . I have climbed the mountain of Sebastia and stood among the ruins of the palace where Salome asked for the head of John the Baptist; I have tried to return the favor of the Good Samaritan by giving free medical advice to a high Sa’maritan priest . . .”
“Born of religious parents who brought me up with compulsory Sunday School attendance and then sent me to college at Lincoln where one hour per week of Biblical History for four years was compulsory, I had long wanted to see the Sea of Galilee (where Christ saw Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew casting their nets into the sea), the site of the Good Samaritan deed, and other such places. The memory of those bright colored Sunday School cards with the Golden Text and religious training in general is a definite part of me that I cannot get away from. . .”
“And so we visited the Holy Land at Easter time, and it was a wonderful experience—seeing thousands of people from all over the world, many in their colorful native garb, all assembled to celebrate the holy occasion, following the procession over the path Christ carried the cross on Good Friday morning; seeing the spot where Simon the Cyrenean picked up the cross and carried it up the hill; seeing the spot on Calvary where the cross stood; worshipping Easter Sunday morning outdoors in front of the Tomb from which He arose. Such things as these one cannot describe. They are felt.”
--From The New York Recorder, July 9, 1960
I am grateful to Dr. François Charbonneau for bringing Dr. George D. Cannon to my attention and for the opportunity to learn more about him. And I am grateful for Dr. Cannon’s service to MAPC, New York City, and his tireless, expansive civil rights work.
--Beverly A. Bartlett, on behalf of The Racial Justice Task Force