By Bob Ray Sanders
bobray@star-telegram.com
Whenever I visit the gravesite of my parents, as I did this week, I usually pay homage to another person buried just a few feet away.
He was the first person to touch me with his hands, because he was the doctor who delivered my parents' last child.
Dr. Riley A. Ransom Sr.'s grave, in addition to a large tombstone, is marked with a plaque from the Texas Historical Commission.
His is a remarkable story of achievement, and one that every person in Fort Worth and Tarrant County should know.
At a time when many black babies were being born at home or in the basements of City-County (now John Peter Smith) and St. Joseph's hospitals, Ransom ran a state-of-the-art medical facility in downtown Fort Worth, named for his wife and partner, Ethel, after her death in 1937.
Born in Columbus, Ky., in 1886, Ransom said he always wanted to be a physician. At age 15, he started work for a box company at a salary of 40 cents a day.
He later took a train ride to Jackson, Tenn., to enroll at Lane College, an institution founded by his cousin, Bishop Isaac Lane. But Ransom said there was "so much sectional strife in the city until I found myself incompatible with it, to the end I had to move out; I then selected a northern school, and went to the Southern Illinois State Normal University at Carbondale."
Ransom would go on to the Louisville National Medical College, graduating valedictorian in 1908. With $50 from his mother -- "the last money I ever had given to me" -- he went to Oklahoma City to take the State Board in Medicine, and after passing, set up a practice in Brooksville, Okla.
During the five years he was in Oklahoma, he kept hearing stories about Texas, so he moved to Gainesville, where he met Ethel. The black population there was not large enough to support a black surgeon, so he came to Fort Worth and opened a hospital.
By 1940, the Ethel Ransom Memorial Hospital on East First Street had grown tremendously and gained a national reputation. It had the latest medical equipment, a fully equipped laboratory, a dining room and on-site food preparation area, and nurses' quarters. It was that year that the Council of Medical Education and Hospitals of the American Medical Association voted unanimously to admit the Fort Worth facility to the Hospital Register of the AMA, one of only two black hospitals in the country to be so distinguished.
That was also the year Riley A. Ransom Jr. graduated from Meharry Medical College in Nashville and came home to Fort Worth to join his father's practice.
Ransom Sr. also would own a nursing school, a pharmacy with a soda fountain, a restaurant, large real estate holdings and equity in about 30 oil wells. He became one of the best-known surgeons in the country.
He died in 1951.
After his father's death, Ransom Jr. became the first African-American to run for Fort Worth City Council, getting more than 5,000 votes. The election went to a runoff, which he lost.
Ransom Sr. once wrote of his adopted home state: "I found in Texas a great Kingdom with miles of fertile soil, her cattle are upon thousands of hills. When it comes to the White race, I have found them as intelligent as they are in New York or Boston -- Public Schools, High Schools and Colleges not to be excelled anywhere ... he is moral, religious, educated and sympathetic with the minority races.... I have learned truly to love Texas. I have married two Texas girls. I have no apologies to make for my statements."
The Tarrant County Black Historical and Genealogical Society is sponsoring a program Saturday afternoon about Ransom Sr., as seen through the eyes of his daughter. "An evening with Elvia McBride" will be from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Lenora Rolla Heritage Center Museum, 1020 E. Humbolt St.
Bob Ray Sanders' column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. 817-390-7775
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