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Chuck Harris
It was a windy, cold winter night in Roanoke, when the 48 year-old doctor felt the first serious cramp in his right upper abdomen. He tried to dismiss it as possibly an abdominal muscle strain. But this pain was becoming unrelenting, signifying an impacted cystic duct or even a possible common duct stone which meant he would need surgery. As skilled a surgeon as he was, he could not operate on himself! He would need to change direction and get to a hospital for help.
But in 1914, in Roanoke, Va., there were no hospitals that took care of black people, which was why Dr. Burrell and his colleagues were building one. But that was still in the future. He needed help now and he had to try. He drove to the Memorial Hospital downtown in hopes that his status as a fellow physician might cause them to make an exception to their usual policy of segregation.