Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Summer II/Section 01/Rufus Samuel Vass

Overview
Rufus Samuel Vass (May 23, 1887 – June 1, 1957 ) was an African American physician, captain of the 92nd Division Medical Corps in World War I, and a participant in the Federal Writer’s Project.

Early Life
Vass was born on May 23, 1887, in Raleigh, NC, to Samuel Nathaniel Vass and Eliza Haywood Vass. Vass also had a sister named Maude. Vass’s father was the illegitimate son of a wealthy, white railroad executive and his servant, Ann, who was a quarter black. Vass's father was categorized as an octoroon, and therefore considered black. Vass's father became a reverend, a respected author on religion, a professor of classics at Shaw University, and an outspoken activist for the improvement of African American educational funding and race relations, Vass's father would pass on his passion for religion, education, and activism to his son. Vass's family, unlike many African American families at the time, valued education. They helped him and his sister reach higher education, a rarity and challenge for African Americans in the 1900's. Vass followed in his father’s footsteps and attended Shaw University, where he received his AB degree in 1908. Afterwards, he went on to attend Leonard Medical School and graduated with his MD in 1912.

Military
In 1917, Vass volunteered for the US Army and was sent to Fort Des Moines, Iowa for training later that year. After a few months of training, Vass was deployed as a first lieutenant of the Medical Corps. First, to Camp Funston, Kansas, as a part of the 367th Ambulance Company of the 92nd Division, and later reassigned to Vosges and Argonne, France in the 368th Field Hospital. Vass’s main responsibility was to treat casualties on the battlefield; he first served in the trenches in the Vosges region with the 92nd Division and later with the 92nd Division in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive and the Battle of Metz. During the battle of Metz, his brother-in-law, Dr. Urbane F. Bass was killed. Following the Battle of Metz, Vass was promoted to captain of the medical corps. During the war, Vass also attended to many soldiers with sexually transmitted diseases like gonorrhea and syphilis and infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and influenza, the latter of which killed roughly 45,000 American soldiers. And, as Vass would find out when he returned home, it would affect millions of civilians in the US. Vass returned from overseas on February 23, 1919.

Later Life
In 1919, Vass began his private practice in Smithfield, NC. However, Vass was soon traveling around North Carolina treating patients with the flu during the influenza pandemic in late 1919, “attending to more than 500 patients a day” and “working 20-hour days”. On November 3, 1920, Vass married Luatle Jefferies. Jefferies’s parents were former slaves and servants of the Benehan Cameron Estate. She was a graduate of Shaw University and schoolteacher for twelve years before they married. After moving his practice to their home in Raleigh, Jefferies left teaching and became Vass’s secretary and nurse. In addition to his general practice, Vass was also on staff at St. Agnes Hospital and worked as the medical director for Eagle Life Insurance. Vass was an active member in several African American medical societies such as the National Medical Association, the L.A. Scruggs Medical Society and North Carolina’s Old North State Medical Society. Additionally, Vass, a lifelong Baptist, was a member of the Negro First Baptist Church of Raleigh and proclaimed in his Federal Writers Project interview, “Religion is the greatest thing in the world, and I wish there was more of it”. Vass died at age 70 of coronary thrombosis in his home in Raleigh.

African American Education in the Jim Crow South
Education in the Jim Crow South was unequal for many reasons. The most obvious being that schools were segregated. The separate school systems were not equal, as white schools received more funding and had teachers with better training. Additionally, fewer black children attended school than white children. This was because they were often pulled out of school early on by their sharecropper parents or by the farm owner to start working. The final reason was, Jim Crow schools only taught their students the skills needed for agricultural work and domestic service, a reflection of the jobs available for black people at the time. Around 60% of black workers were laborers on farms, around 30% worked in domestic service for white families, around 10% were factory workers and shop workers, and only 2% held professional jobs as teachers, doctors, and ministers. Unequal education had extensive consequences. Black people were seen as inferior, due to their lower educational status and low-income labor jobs. Moreover, black workers made less than their counterparts, no matter the job, which kept many in the black community impoverished and unable to seek out better opportunities.

Inequality in the Medical Field
African American physicians faced many difficulties entering the medical field in at the turn of the 20th century. White physicians were able to join the American Medical Association (AMA), which allowed them to practice at hospitals, meanwhile black physicians weren’t, so they had to figure out their own means of practicing medicine. Black physicians were also unable to get specialized training and had to compete for black patients who could pay. In response to this, a collective of black physicians created the National Medical Association (NMA) in response to being barred from the AMA and began opening hospitals in their own homes in response to being prohibited from working in regular hospitals. The NMA helped black physicians progress until in 1910, the Flexner Report imposed a new standard on medical colleges that many black schools could not meet. All but two black medical colleges closed, which were Howard University College of Medicine and Meharry Medical College. An issue that stemmed from this was that black physicians were subsequently perceived as unqualified and less educated. This became true to many black patients due to the absence of black medical schools and the absence of black physicians in hospitals. This made it harder for black physicians to find patients and earn as much as their white counterparts, ultimately making it harder to sustain a career in medicine.