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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Feb. 20, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Dr. Carlton Goodlett

African American pioneer

By Gloria La Riva in San Francisco

Dr. Carlton Benjamin Goodlett was a medical doctor, fighter against racism, supporter of socialism and newspaper publisher. Over 1,000 people attended a memorial for Goodlett at the historic Third Baptist Church here on Feb. 7.

Goodlett was a remarkable achiever. That he accomplished so much under segregation gained him tremendous respect from his colleagues. That he fought so arduously for justice for African American people made him a hero in the Bay Area and around the world.

Goodlett was born in 1914 in Florida. At the age of 8 in Omaha, Neb., he witnessed a lynching of a Black man and the struggle of the community in response. It was this and other early incidents that made him determined to fight racism all his life.

In 1937, at the age of 23, Goodlett received his doctorate in psychology at the University of California at Berkeley. It would be 30 years before another Black student would be granted a PhD at that school. Before that, he had been president of the student body at Howard University.

He got his medical degree from Meharry Medical College in Nashville at 29, and moved to San Francisco in 1945. But Goodlett's road to his goal as healer was marked with the bitter reality of racism.

Dr. Goodlett and two other physicians were the only Black doctors in San Francisco in the 1940s. For years they were allowed to treat their patients only outside the hospitals. Goodlett led a fight to win access for all Black doctors.

Goodlett felt strongly that Black people needed their own media to accurately reflect the community's issues. In 1946, he became co-publisher of the Reporter. He then took over the Sun and it became the Sun-Reporter, today San Francisco's best-known weekly Black newspaper.

His lifelong friend since 1935, Thomas Fleming, made the crowd laugh when he said that Goodlett won the Sun from its white owner in a poker game. Fleming is executive editor of the newspaper.

Goodlett was an early champion of equal access to jobs, schools, and opportunity. Despite a busy schedule as a doctor and publisher, he managed to lead various causes. In 1947 he spearheaded the fight against San Francisco's public transit for failing to hire Black workers. Today the workforce at MUNI is over 40 percent African American.

Dr. Goodlett was arrested at San Francisco State University in 1968 during protests by students demanding a Black studies department.

Resisted 1950s witch hunt

He stood virtually alone during the 1950s witchhunts in supporting two Black civil-rights giants who were shunned in San Francisco. Because of W.E.B. DuBois' and Paul Robeson's open association with socialism, no one would host their respective visits. Fleming told this reporter, "Carlton convinced Rev. Haynes to let DuBois and Robeson speak at Third Baptist. No one else would welcome them."

Goodlett was a member of the World Peace Council and traveled many times to the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. Goodlett visited Vietnam in 1975.

Dr. Goodlett convinced many African American youth to enter the medical field, including doctors Ahimsa Sumchai and Ramona Tascoe Burris, who spoke at the memorial. Dr. Sumchai said, "I didn't want to be like Dr. Goodlett, I wanted to be him." Dr. Burris said, "Carlton took me aside and said I really needed to become a doctor. I was about to enter law school." She is now a practicing intern in Oakland.

Dr. Goodlett supported every progressive struggle. During the U.S. genocide in Iraq, he helped host a benefit for the National Coalition to End the U.S. War in the Middle East.

In a rousing eulogy, Rev. Amos Brown, pastor of Third Baptist and San Francisco supervisor, proposed that Fillmore St. be renamed Dr. Carlton Goodlett Way. He shouted, "If Herb Caen [a San Francisco columnist] can have a street named for him, we can surely have a street named after Carlton." Fillmore is named for President Millard Fillmore, who signed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 allowing slaveowners to kidnap escaped slaves.

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