Falls could never remember a time that being African American did not signify “a certain handicap.” As a child, his parents would often remind him and his siblings that they had only one person to fear—God. His parents also taught the children that all people shared in a common humanity, reinforcing this with the warning “that if we ever attacked another child because he happened to be white, we would get a licking when we got home.”130
Falls’s parents sent him to a public school because the only Catholic school he could be admitted to was St. Elizabeth’s, which was designated for blacks and known to be inferior to the other Catholic schools. In addition, Falls noted that the North Central Association did not accredit St. Elizabeth High School and its students therefore could not attend Crane Junior College.131 Essentially, receiving a Catholic education would have meant that Falls could not have become a medical doctor.
Early on, Falls’s parents stressed the importance of religious tolerance, and he credited his family’s befriending of the Jewish family next door as the main reason he did not have anti-Semitic feelings growing up. It should be noted that the neighborhoods in which he grew up were mostly white.132 During Falls’s high school years, his father served many volunteer hours as the secretary for St. Monica’s Order of Foresters. Without being specific, Falls recalled an instance in which “I saw my father stand and fight on principle. He was the only person fighting in a group of two hundred, and I saw him fight until he won. This left a lasting impression on me.”133 The influence of this event will be seen throughout the life of Falls.
After graduating from Englewood High School in 1918, he attended Crane Junior College. There he befriended a group of German Jews who told him that he should not associate with Slavic Jews, as they were inferior. Believing this to be “silly,” he refused to follow their advice.134 Later on, while he was involved with the Catholic Worker movement, he had opportunities to speak to white Catholic schoolchildren, among whom he found a great deal of anti-Semitism. It was his practice in these situations to ask how many of the girls were named Mary. Many of the children would proudly raise their hands and tell him that the name was holy because it was the name of “our Holy Mother.” To this, he would respond: “Mary was a Jew. Christ was a Jew. And an Oriental Jew. Believe me, Oriental Jews are not blue-eyed blondes!” This line of reasoning usually made the kids think twice about their anti-Semitic comments.135
The summer of 1919 is often referred to as the Red Summer because there were over two dozen separate race riots in the United States, including one in Chicago.136 While the black population had been steadily increasing in Chicago since the Civil War, it doubled in the three years before the riot. This led to very tense racial conditions in the job market following the end of World War I, with the return of white workers whose labor had been replaced by black men. Many of the whites felt that black workers should be fired to provide more jobs for whites.137
The riot in Chicago lasted from 27 July to 3 August. On the second day of the riot, several white gangs stopped streetcars to pull off blacks, beat them, and in some cases, kill them. One gang attacked the streetcar one of Falls’s brother was riding on his way home from work. A white man on the streetcar hid Falls’s brother under his seat, saving him from being discovered.
On the third day of the riot, not realizing the situation was still dangerous, the eighteen-year-old Falls and his father decided to go to their jobs at the post office. They were attacked by a gang of whites on a street that was brimming with many other people going to work. After initially fighting back, Falls ran off, hoping to take most of the gang with him, which he did. Being young, fast, and athletic, he outran them and made it to the post office. His father arrived an hour later, with six white men who had surrounded him and protected him from the remaining members of the gang. They later discovered that a black man by the name of Robert Williams had been killed less than an hour earlier on the very corner where they had been attacked.138
Falls and his father did not bother trying to go to work the rest of the week. For the next few nights, they stayed alert in their home and listened to the rioting that, fortunately, did not come to their doorstep. The family did not own a gun. When they finally went back to work, the African Americans from his neighborhood traveled in groups of five or more, and Falls and his father armed themselves with knives.139
Falls had felt helpless as the rioting occurred outside his parents’ home, since they had little with which to protect themselves. Although Falls was never a proponent of violence in the struggle for racial justice, he never wavered in his belief in the right to self-defense.
Medical Career
Falls attended the prestigious Northwestern University Medical School and earned his bachelor of arts and doctor of medicine degrees in 1925.140 Though it was not required of most medical students at the time, Falls did an internship at Kansas City General Hospital the year before he graduated.141 This was his first experience of a city that was deeply segregated in all respects. Despite episodes of racial prejudice and violence in Chicago, he was accustomed to walking into any shop he pleased. In Kansas City, he was not allowed into most stores or restaurants because of his skin color. Even at church, he encountered racism: often, a white person would genuflect before entering Falls’s pew, but then notice that he was black and go to a different pew. He frequently “wondered why such people bothered to come to church at all.” These experiences in Kansas City gave him “a sense of being contaminated by the bigotry and discrimination,” and he temporarily developed a hate for white people that scared him. He was very glad to return to Chicago.142
Immediately after graduation, Falls opened his own office.143 At the time, newly minted physicians were expected to begin general practices of their own and to accumulate some experience before hospitals would even consider hiring them. In March 1926, Falls applied with a number of other blacks to the Chicago Medical Society. Out of that group, he was the only one to regularly write, call, and stop in the society’s office to see what was happening with his application, to which he was always told he would receive a response soon. He was finally notified of his admittance to the society in March 1927. None of the other African American doctors were admitted. Falls believed that the other men were not admitted because “they were not willing to fight.”144
From 1926 to 1930, Falls also worked as a junior surgeon from time to time at Wilson Hospital in Chicago. From 1932 onward, he worked more and more regularly at Provident Hospital in Chicago, initially as a junior surgeon, then as an attending surgeon, and for a time as the chief of staff.145 In his memoir, Falls pointed out that Provident was known as “the colored hospital” in Chicago, and a fellow physician noted its standing as a “second-rate” hospital, but it was one of the very few places that would hire Falls.146
During his time as a doctor, Falls wrote a number of articles in medical journals regarding the use of different treatments for various ailments.147 In 1929, he wrote an article for doctors just beginning in the medical profession entitled “As a Beginner Figures It Out,” 148 in which he lamented the constant difficulty in collecting bills. He began by using moral suasion—explaining to clients that he expected prompt payment in return for his full attention to their needs. This method was not successful, and he found that almost 25 percent of his patients were delinquent in their bills. In response, he sent a letter to all his delinquent patients, in which he clearly stated that all payments would be expected at the time of service, with emergency patients given an extra two weeks to pay. If he was to perform a surgery, 30 percent was due at the consultation, with the balance due at the time of the operation.
Dr. Falls at his office desk. Chicago Illinois: 1941. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USF34–038835-D.
When Falls wrote the article, he was also prosecuting two delinquent cases in court. The following year, his delinquent accounts only amounted