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Otto's Choice:
Interview with Dr. Otto Stallworth
By Carin Chea
It is a breezy southern California evening, and HBO's newest show, the quirky-steamy Love & Death, starring Elizabeth Olsen, is making its premiere. Then, in a pivotal transition, “Boogie Oogie Oogie” by Taste of Honey blasts on as the shows protagonists engage in typical montage.
That is the moment I realize: Otto Stallworth is a really big deal. Yes, he graduated high school at 16, crossed Alabama state lines during the era of Jim Crow, and earned a college degree followed by a medical degree. As if that wasn't enough, Otto Stallworth (now Dr. Stallworth) pursued and earned an MBA.
Somewhere along the line, Dr. Stallworth also found the time to manage the group Taste of Honey. Under his management, they would go on to make history as the first Black artist to win the Grammy for “best new artist” for their song “Boogie Oogie Oogie,” which I happened to be dancing along to prior to penning this paragraph.
Otto Stallworth is a man of great accomplishment. But, perhaps more prominent than his accolades are the systemic and personal obstacles he has overcome in his lifetime.
His memoir, Are You a N****R or a Doctor?, is a transparent and witty glimpse into the life of an extraordinary man thriving in seemingly oppressive circumstances.
Have you always been a gifted scholar? Your list of achievements is quite impressive.
I was until I went to college. In high school, I almost got a 4.0 GPA. I say “almost” because every time I got in trouble, the principal would reduce my GPA.
That cannot be legal!
It certainly wasn't a democracy at that school.
How was the experience of crossing state lines for the first time in the 1950s?
When I went to college, I got distracted by the social life. I had never left Alabama until I turned 16. I was looking forward to this new place and got caught up with the social life and the girls who were my age. I got it together a little later, though.
I've always known the importance of education; it was ingrained in me growing up. My mother had me reading really early, like the newspaper and street signs, and at the new colored or black library.
Leaving was a double edge sword. I had fantasies of what life would be like outside of Alabama. I wanted to see Kentucky blue grass and I was disappointed when I saw it and it wasn't blue. I even expected to see bluebirds and yellow sparrows flying around.
I had never seen the ocean. In the lakes in Alabama, there were plenty of snakes and mosquitos and mud. Lots of mud, but I had never seen sand. My memoir is a fish out of water story. Each place I went I had to adjust. Even the way I talked.
I had such a heavy southern accent that people from the north couldn't understand me. I got really quiet in college because people made fun of the way I talked. But that happened even in Birmingham.
People made fun of the way you talked even in Alabama?
No, we'd laugh when northerners would visit. We'd make fun of the way they talked all proper.
What motivated you to earn your MBA, then your MD?
Growing up, the teachers and parents would ask us (after they got our name and age), “What do you want to be when you grow up?” My friend's father was a physician and I went over to their house sometimes.
I also have a cousin who is a neurosurgeon, he asked me run his biotech company. I thought I'd need an advanced degree for that, so that's why I got my MBA.
I practiced medicine for 45 years. After beginning a slow retirement (which began late 2015) I was accepted into an MFA program at UCLA. I finished one year and had to quit due to a short-term illness. I finished a screenplay (which was a murder mystery) and that's how I got to writing this memoir.
Denise Nicholas is an actress on tons of TV shows and is an Emmy-award winner. She invited me to be a part of her writing group. Everyone in the writing group was in the entertainment business. I joined as a neophyte and it was one of the best decisions I've made in terms of learning to write.
Because of the demands of medicine, I had to read a lot of medical books and journals. I had to keep up and stay current with how medicine was changing. When it was time to relax, the last thing I'd want to do was read a book. It wasn't until retirement when I started reading more.
Tell us about your memoir and its evocative title. What inspired you to write this?
I went to all-black schools growing up. I went to predominantly black colleges and medical schools, and so forth.
When I finished medical school, I had an internship in Ohio with 35 other doctors and I was the only black doctor. I had great training and never felt inadequate. In about my 3rd week there, I made an important diagnosis in the emergency room at 3 am: The woman had an ectopic pregnancy. A rupture would have been a life-threatening event. After that, word traveled around the hospital and I was some kind of hero.
The title of the book, while in Ohio, a patient asked me that question, and I responded, “Both.” I'm a n****r and a doctor.” That was the inspiration behind the title and that story was the first chapter I wrote.
This was a patient with dementia, a retired police chief from a small town in Ohio, who wouldn't come out of the bathroom. More of a nurse's problem than a doctor's but I wanted to establish rapport with nursing staff so I agreed to see him.
He was sitting on the toilet and looking down at the floor. After a while, he agreed to stand and leave the bathroom. Keep in mind that before that, he was looking down and only saw my shoes. So, when he stood up, he squinted and asked me that question. I was shocked because I hadn't heard that word since I left Alabama! I was shocked.
That experience, that question remained in my mind. That never occurred again in the 45 years of practice in a predominantly multi-cultural environment all over Southern California.
I decided to use that title in terms of getting attention. It certainly kept my attention. But the book is very personal and a collection of stories, not all about racial conflict. 90% is about personal issues. I'm told that some people expect something different when they hear the title of the book.
What do you mean by that?
Some people expected this to totally be about a doctor practicing medicine and all the racism I went through. But, it's not like that; it's very personal. Plus, in the medical world, for the most part, not 100%, my contemporaries had respect for any physician who was good at his specialty, a good diagnostician, a good medical detective in terms of diagnosis and treatment or surgical skills.
Regarding the title, I had an agent when I started this process, late 2021. This one agent I signed with asked me how did I decide? I said, “Decide what?” And she said, “Whether you're a n****r or a doctor?”
Are there any projects you'd like us to know about?
There are two things. First, in terms of writing, I still have my screenplay Murder at Beauty World. The protagonist is an anesthesiologist whose patient dies. As the story progresses, he finds out it wasn't an anesthetic death, but a murder. I'm planning to turn this screenplay into a book of the same title.
The second thing is, there's a chapter in my book called Reverend John Wesley Rice: My Unsung Hero. He was Condoleezza Rice's father and my counselor in high school. He lived a couple of blocks away and his presbyterian church was a block from my home.
When it came time to go to college, I didn't have the money. I had the grades, almost straight A's. Reverend Rice found a scholarship and a loan for me which had been in existence only about a year. The two scholarships and loans were awarded based on admissions and demonstrable financial need.
While writing the story about Rev. Rice I recalled that help I had received. That memory inspired me to create the Stallworth OhYes! Foundation. It provides a full, four-year scholarship at Howard University and a full four-year scholarship at my medical school, Meharry Medical College in Nashville Tennessee.
Both scholarships are based on need, not grades. I am hoping through donations, and as the foundation grows, we can help more students.
For more information regarding Dr. Stallworth and his book go to: www.ottoestallworthjrmd.com
For more info about the scholarship foundation got to: www.ottoestallworthjrmd.com/stallworth-foundation
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