Legacy in Real Time: A Call from Dr. Robert Smith
Photo credit: National Association of Community Health Centers
Each fall and spring, Elona and I hit the road, presenting at Primary Care Association conferences across the country. Today, we were in Mississippi for the Community Health Center Association’s annual gathering, leading a session titled: “Building a Grant-Ready Culture: Strategic Tools for Sustainable Health Center Growth.”
The session focused on strategy, how to streamline grant processes, strengthen organizational capacity, and build systems that are sustainable. We always start with a question:
Do you know about Freedom Summer?
It’s not just an icebreaker. It sets the tone. It reminds people that community health didn’t start in a boardroom, it started in the streets, in the fields, in the thick of a movement for justice.
What I didn’t know when I posed that question today is that by the end of the session, I’d be on the phone with Dr. Robert Smith himself. Yes, that Dr. Smith.
As I was presenting, someone mentioned he was at the conference. But we’d just missed him. I remember thinking, “Wow, what a moment that would have been.” At the end of the session, while chatting with some participants, Chris Gray, a board member from Jackson-Hinds Comprehensive Health Center, walked over and said:
“Dr. Smith is on the phone for you.”
I looked at him and said, “Who?”
He repeated: “Dr. Robert Smith.”
I froze. THE Dr. Robert Smith. I was in disbelief.
A few seconds later, I was on the phone with the man whose work laid the foundation for everything we now call community health. The man who made it possible for health centers to exist in places no one else wanted to serve. We talked only for a few minutes, but in that short time, I felt the full weight of his legacy. And I felt the privilege of being part of something so much bigger than myself.
If you don’t know his story, you should.
Dr. Robert Smith has been transforming healthcare in Mississippi, and across this country, for decades. As a physician, activist, and architect of the community health center movement, he brought medical care to people who had been systematically shut out of the system. During Freedom Summer, he helped create the infrastructure that still sustains us. He co-founded what became Delta Health Center in Mound Bayou, one of the very first federally funded community health centers in the South. And he did it all while navigating—and resisting—some of the most entrenched racism this country has ever known.
I encourage you to read this profile from the National Association of Community Health Centers: “At the Fork of the Stream: The Life of Dr. Robert Smith”
It’s more than a history lesson. It’s a reminder of what’s possible when courage meets purpose.
As someone who believes in signs, today felt like one. In a session where we talked about sustainability, strategy, and capacity building, I was reminded of the why behind it all. The work isn’t just technical. It’s sacred. It’s legacy work. And we’re not doing it alone, we’re standing on the shoulders of giants like Dr. Smith.
To speak with him, even for a moment, was a gift.
To continue the work he started? That’s an honor I don’t take lightly.
— Kemi