On this day in 1933

Jan. 3, 1933 

Credit: Courtesy of UMMC

Dr. Aaron Shirley was born in Gluckstadt, Mississippi. Before he could pronounce the word “doctor,” his mother had declared that he would be one. 

“She was a widow with eight children who worked as a nurse’s aide and a domestic,” he recalled in an interview with The Clarion-Ledger. “My father died when I was 16 or 17 months old. I don’t remember him. But he did leave my mother with property.” 

She sold the property  off, piece by piece, to pay for the education of all her children. 

After completing medical school in Tennessee, Shirley returned to Mississippi. He joined the civil rights movement, and his family’s home was bombed in Vicksburg. In 1965, he began his pediatric residency at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. He was the first Black resident there and the first Black pediatrician in the state. 

Shirley’s pioneering approach to helping the impoverished with their medical needs (turning a dilapidated mall into a medical mall, establishing community health advocates to check on patients at home). 

“Aaron could have done a whole lot of things in life that would’ve benefited him more financially than trying to give health care to poor people,” recalled former Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Reuben Anderson, who worked with Shirley in the movement. “But as long as I’ve known him, his complete focus has been to make sure the underprivileged are served.” 

In 1993, Shirley won the MacArthur “genius” grant for his innovative approach. His wife, Ollye Brown Shirley, was a civil rights activist in her own right, chairing the Mississippi NAACP Education Committee. 

After his death at age 81 in 2014, his family received a U.S. flag that had flown over the White House in his honor.

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