Distinguished African American medical doctor and civic leader, Dr. Fred Sessoms was born on January 28, 1879, the third of eight children of Henry (1843-1926) and Mary Jane Mitchell Sessoms (1846- 1925) in rural Harrellville, Hertfort County, N.C. The Sessoms family’s proud oral history is that Dr. Sessoms’ direct great-grandfather on his father’s side of the family had been an African prince whose tribe was captured and sold into slavery in America. His mother descended from a family of free Blacks in Greensboro, N. C., who were land owners long before the start of the Civil War. Like many Blacks and like the Biblical children of Israel, their bodies but not their minds had been enslaved in a far and distant land.

Armed with the love of his parents and siblings, a knowledge of his family’s history, and the attributes of honesty, pride, love, intelligence, and an almost unbelievable capacity for hard work over periods of long hours, Fred Sessoms was prepared to go forth and satisfy his insatiable thirst for knowledge. With his parents being cotton, peanut, and corn farmers, money was not in abundance in his family. But his family believed in education and they made sure that Fred and his siblings got as much as they could. Unfortunately, educational opportunities were quite limited because there existed only a two-room, two-teacher, multigrade school with a pot belly stove, outdoor toilets, and no electricity in his Hertfort County, N.C., farm community, and school was in session for Black students only four months a year. So Fred’s father bought and borrowed other books for Fred to supplement the hand-medown, used textbooks provided from the white county schools of the 1880s and 90s. He read and digested everything he could. Besides reading and farming, he became an excellent hunter early in life to help provide food for the family table and because he enjoyed it as a recreational activity.

By coinci- dence, Fred’s first teacher was Joseph Sessoms, a scholarly uncle and a remarkable man. Joseph later attended medical school at Leonard Medical College of Shaw University in Raleigh NC, graduated, and became a very prosperous and highly regarded physician in Reidsville, Ohio. Young Fred often heard his father speak lovingly and proudly of his brother, Joseph Sessoms, and undoubtedly this uncle provided the inspiration that caused Fred to be motivated to study medicine and become a doctor.

A serious student, Fred made no room for anything at school but his pursuit of academic excellence and the Lyceum Debating Society. In his book, Struggling To Climb, written in 1958 about his father-in-law, Dr. Fred Sessoms, Dr. E. L. Wilkerson (husband of Janet Elizabeth Sessoms) writes, “Small schools, typical of those in rural areas during the latter part of the nineteenth century, produced men and women of com- mendable – even great – stature. These incubators of education, small and unimposing as they seemed to appear, were schools in the fullest sense of the word, characterized by severity, punctuality, obedience, stringent testing, and a general environment of ‘strictly business.’ The scope and comprehension of the curriculum was unbelievably broad; yet, by the time he was fifteen years old, Fred had absorbed just about all the erudition that the school at Harrellsville had to offer.”

Clearly, the thirst for knowledge of Fred Sessoms had not yet been satisfied. His dreams and aspirations to become a medical doctor were at the forefront of his thinking. Dr. Wilkerson states in his book that “… after years of observing Fred’s continued yearning for knowledge, and his strong determination to acquire it, his parents resolved to make sacrifices in other directions and give of their utmost in seeing the fulfillment of their son’s dreams…”

It was necessary to send him away to school. Even with the 1898 national recession in business and the disaster of crop failure in his home county, to include his parents’ crop, Fred was not deterred. It was necessary for him to leave school and work for a short time, but he returned to school, continued working part time and graduated. During his struggles and quest to prepare to become a medical doctor, he met Minnie J. Moore, who would later become his wife.

Fred’s determination was indomitable. Prior to entering medical school, he taught school for a year in his home county to repay many of the debts he had accumulated and to finance the cost of building a new home for his parents who had sacrificed so much for his education.

At the completion of the school year, he accepted summer employment in Pennsylvania to earn enough money to pay for his first year at Leonard Medical College of Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C. After a challenging but successful year in med school, he returned to the same job the second summer.

May 1906 was the culmination of his hard work, sacrifice, and pursuit of academic excellence in med school and he graduated with honors. He practiced medicine for a year in his home county and completed paying off all debts and was ready to ask for the hand in marriage of the love of his life, Minnie J. Moore. After their marriage, they decided to leave N.C.

Dr. Sessoms journeyed as far as Warrenton, Georgia, and stopped to visit his cousin, Dr. M. P. Sessoms who had already established a medical practice there. M. P. advised him to visit Washington, Georgia, to scout out the area. Dr. Fred Sessoms visited Washington and really liked the town. The rest, as they say is history.

(to be continued next week)