Viola Mary Johnson Coleman

Viola Mary Johnson Coleman (September 25, 1919 - October 12, 2005) was the first African-American female physician to practice medicine in Midland, Texas. She was active in advocating for the desegregation of schools and for the integration of hospitals in Midland. In 1945, she enlisted the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in bringing a lawsuit against Louisiana State University medical school for denying her admission based upon her race, a decade before some of the most influential civil rights actions such as in Montgomery and Little Rock. In part due to Coleman's case, NAACP lawyers pursued similar litigation for desegregation of schools in the late 1940s and 1950s, including the U.S. Supreme Court case Sweatt vs Painter. She was known as a compassionate physician and figurehead in the Midland community, never turning anyone away even if they couldn't pay for medical care.

Early life and education Coleman was born in 1919 in New Iberia, Louisiana, to Jefferson Johnson Sr, a lumber worker, and Ella Johnson, a domestic worker. She had one brother, Jefferson Johnson Jr. In 1951, she married Raymond Coleman, a teacher, (1917-1998) and had two children, Conrad and Reginald

After finishing high school at age 15, Coleman enrolled in Southern University in Louisiana at the Liberal Arts College in the 1930s. She went on to teach at Grambling University. She then decided to study medicine rather than nursing, feeling this was "where she wanted to be." Louisiana, along with other Southern states used part of the Supreme Court law from Gaines v. Canada passed in 1938, which ruled that states had to provide in-state education to black students or create a school that would educate both white and black students, further reinforcing segregationist policies. Many states chose to fund education for black students at different schools, rather than integrate them into all-white universities. Coleman was given funding for her tuition at an out-of-state school. As a result, she ended up attending Meharry Medical College in Tennessee. In April 1947, the 19th District Court in Baton Rouge ruled against Coleman citing her out-state-residency status. It is significant to note that Coleman was forced to seek her education in a different state due to the segregation of schools, and LSU's rejection of her application based on race. In February 1948, she received an encouraging letter from Daniel E. Byrd, then the field secretary for the NAACP in New Orleans:"Please don't permit those persons whose attitudes and thoughts are dwarfed to the extent that they are antebellum in their philosophy and demeanor to alarm you. Only a handful of our people want integration and it is God's valiant minority who must wage war on the insidious evils; war on a double-barreled basis. In the one barrel aimed, sighted and cocked on the laws, practices, customs and usages that keep us walled in; and the other barrel, in a like manner, cocked on the members of our group, who for a job or personal gain or for even a handout, would aid in the perpetuation of these evils.

Our hope is in the youth, whose minds are not enslaved to this inferior status." Historians agree what happened in Coleman's case was historically significant, occurring at a transitional point in American history when "separate but equal" was being defined, and before the later Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's. which "alleged that the Midland Independent School District (MISD) was maintaining separate schools for black and Mexican-American students at the elementary school level."

Legacy Coleman died on October 12, 2005, at her home in Midland at the age of 86. A bust statue in honor of Coleman was unveiled at Midland Memorial Hospital in 2008.