Matthew Walker Sr.

Dr. Matthew Walker Sr. was Chief Surgeon at the George W. Hubbard Hospital of Meharry Medical College, a consulting surgeon at the Riverside Sanitarium and Hospital in Nashville, and Director of Surgery at the Taborian Hospital, Mound Bayou, Mississippi. His memberships included the Volunteer State Medical Association, the R. F. Boyd Medical Society, the John Henry Hale Surgical Society, New York Academy of Science, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and membership in the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society. Dr. Walker was featured on the cover of Alpha Omega Alpha's magazine, Pharos. He, along with a cameo portrait of his family, was pictured on the front of Pharos in spring, 2003 issue. He was also pictured on the cover of the Journal of the National Medical Association in May 1979 in a special issue dedicated to himself. Walker had been unanimously elected President of the National Medical Association in 1953, and served from August 1954 to August 1955. Walker was a member of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity, and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Meharry Alumni Association.

Dr. Matthew Walker Sr. died on July 15, 1978 in Nashville, Tennessee. At the time of his death, he had provided the surgical education to about half of the Black physicians in the United States. The American Journal of Surgery cited him in 1998 as one of seven exemplary Black surgeons. Dr. Charles Johnson, a Meharrian, wrote the following: "Matthew Walker was well-known and highly regarded as a teacher and surgeon. He was one of the most visible and widely respected of all Meharry's alumni." Then, Dr. W. Montague Cobb, as editor emeritus of the Journal of the National Medical Association, wrote: "During the 28 years this writer edited the Journal... it was possible to pay tribute to many outstanding figures...at Meharry. Yet, none stands taller than Matthew Walker. His stature will grow in the lengthening corridors of time – we shall not see his like again.".

While he was Chairman of the Department of Surgery, Dr. Walker's residency program was such that he trained a list of physicians who have become board-certified under the program. Because they loved and admired him so, in 1958, some of Walker's trainees, who were over 70 persons, started the Matthew Walker Surgical Society. This was done strictly in Walker's honor, and to help promote Dr. Walker's form of teaching for expansive learning.

Dr. Walker had quite a broad experience with surgery. He could go over the whole peritoneal cavity, disregarding today's distinction between the abdominal and pelvic cavities. Walker knew urology and proctology. Dr. Walker also served as acting Chairman of the Department of Surgery at Hubbard. Finally, as the year 1944 progressed, Dr. Matthew Walker was made Chairman and Professor of the Department of Surgery. As such, Matthew Walker served as chairman of Meharry's medical school curriculum committee. During this period, with the Dean of the medical school, Dr. Daniel Thomas Rolfe, Dr. Walker revitalized the entire medical school curriculum. Walker served in this position of chair of the medical school curriculum in the 1950s and beyond. He was made a Fellow of the International College of Surgeons in 1947.

As earlier noted, Matthew Walker established a residency program for his future doctors that was quite stunning. As he was working at Meharry, Walker kept getting called to Taborian Hospital in Mound Bayou, Mississippi. Taborian, built by an organization of Black people called the Knights and Daughters of Tabor, was set up with an arrangement for its patients to be provided with health care services. These services were covered under the Taborian insurance premiums; and, were prepaid. With Taborian Hospital opening on February 12, 1942, this service provided care that preceded Medicare, Medicaid, Health Maintenance Organizations (HMO) and other similar ones. There, Blacks had established medical facilities for themselves; however, proper medical professionals were not largely available. So, for part of the training;and, after obtaining a major Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) grant from Washington, D. C., Dr. M. Walker built a training program that would involve a rotation from Meharry to Mound Bayou, a small Delta town. Dr. Asa G. Yancey writes of Dr. M. Walker (on learning of the loss of the services of the surgeon-in-charge at Taborian) having sent him, Yancey, as a team member to Mississippi to help provide medical services to these mostly very poor, Black, Delta people. In time, Walker, with some of his colleagues, took some young women from the cotton fields, and, over time, trained them so thoroughly that they became qualified nurses. In his zeal to keep the program up to par, Walker, himself, was known to have driven to Mound Bayou from his home in Nashville over 200 times. Dr. Walker's own daughter, the late Charlotte Rose Walker, M.D., also trained at Taborian among other places such as the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital for Cancer and Allied Diseases in New York which partnership (between Meharry and Memorial) Dr. Walker also established. This training occurred at a time when going to Mound Bayou meant a long, hot drive down to the Mississippi town from Nashville. As a Black person driving, one had to know the places where he/she could stop comfortably for a bite to eat as segregation was still alive during part of this era.

Having returned to the George W. Hubbard Hospital of Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee in 1939, Dr. Walker became an instructor in physiology there from 1930 to 1942. He became an instructor in pathology at Meharry from 1941 until 1943. Then, Dr. Walker was an assistant professor and gynecology from 1939 until 1942. He was associate professor from 1942 until 1944. In 1944, he was appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as Surgeon in The Reserve of The United States Public Health Service for a period of five years. He achieved the rank of full professor in surgery and gynecology at Hubbard Hospital also in 1944.

While attending New Orleans University, Matthew Walker met and in 1937 married Alice Willa Gibbs Johnson. The two soon moved to Nashville where they resided in the countryside with a farming family named Beale, until they were able to buy a suitable home in Nashville proper. Four children were eventually born to them: Charlotte Rose (who became a general surgeon specializing in oncology and a professor of surgery as did her father), Maxine June (who later married Brandford Giddings Sr., PhD (chemistry)), who became a computer technologist, Matthew Jr., who became a successful and ardent community activist, and Daniel Phillip, who became a microbiologist.

After internship at Hubbard Hospital in Nashville, Dr. Matthew Walker Sr. served as a resident in surgery and gynecology at the George W. Hubbard Hospital of Meharry Medical College and was an instructor in surgery, gynecology, orthopedics, anesthesia, and areas of eye, ear, nose and throat. Walker held these positions from 1936 until 1938. Studying under Dr. Edward L. Howes at Howard University in Washington, D.C., Dr. Walker spent 1938-1939 as a General Education and Board Fellow in surgery. Additionally, Walker spent a few summers doing studies at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota and at the Crile Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio.

Having obtained an A.B. from New Orleans University in 1929, Walker decided he wanted a medical career. He applied and was accepted at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, and received an M.D. degree in 1934, with honors. He became a diplomate of the American Board of Surgery about 1946, and received one of two of the highest scores out of eighty persons taking the examination at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was elected to the Kappa Pi Honorary Society at Meharry.

Matthew Walker Sr. (December 7, 1906 – July 15, 1978) was an American physician and surgeon. He was one of the first African Americans to become a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons. He was one of the most prominent Black doctors in the 20th century in the United States.