Nearly five decades ago, Otis Smith was on the verge of dropping out of medical school when an anonymous benefactor stepped in and paid his tuition.
Not until 35 years later did Smith, the first licensed black pediatrician in Georgia, learn that his patron was Margaret Mitchell.Smith, 69, is vice chairman of Margaret Mitchell House Inc., a foundation devoted to creating a museum of "The Dump," the apartment where Mitchell wrote most of "Gone With the Wind." Germany's Daimler-Benz AG has agreed to pay for restoring the building. Plans are to have it ready in time for the 1996 Olympics.
Smith said that telling his story is the least he can do to help repay the woman who helped finance the education of at least 20 Morehouse College students in the late 1940s. The contributions were mentioned briefly in the autobiography of late Morehouse president Benjamin Mays, but details are only now emerging.
"She was an extremely private person and her generosity toward black medical students would not have been well-received in the political climate of the '40s," Smith said. "She was trying to protect her conservative Atlanta family from possible criticism."
Instead, Mitchell was branded a racist for what some critics said were her insensitive portraits of blacks and a glorification of the Old South in her famous novel.
Although Smith never met Mitchell, he does not believe she was a racist. "Her book describes life the way it was then," said Smith, a former president of the Atlanta NAACP who is retired from medicine. "We may not like it, but that's history."
Mitchell's motivation to improve medical care for blacks was fueled in part by the white medical establishment's cruel treatment of her maid. Carrie Holbrook was dying of cancer, and despite Mitchell's pleas, no white hospital would admit her. Mitchell wrote in subsequent letters to Mays that her donations were given in Hol-brook's memory.
Smith was a Mitchell admirer long before he learned she was his benefactor. During the 1939 premiere of "Gone With the Wind," he strained to catch glimpses of Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh. Afterward, he kept a scrapbook of articles about Mitchell and the event.
As a teenager, Smith vowed to become a doctor when he saw how badly his sick father was treated at a local hospital. Years later, Smith would seek the help of Morehouse College classmate Martin Luther King Jr. in a campaign to desegregate Atlanta's hospitals.
The son of a baker and a maid, Smith paid his way through More-house by delivering newspapers and working on tobacco farms during the summers. He was in his second semester of Meharry Medical College in Nashville when his money ran out.
Desperate, he sought help from Mays, his mentor, who promised he would take care of it. He did, with Mitchell's money.
Mays and Mitchell exchanged more than 50 letters beginning in 1941, says Ira Joe Johnson, a White House liaison and former Morehouse trustee whose biography of Mays will be published in August.
"It was a secret thing at the time," Johnson said, "but she was very helpful to Morehouse."
The letters reveal a disagreement between Mitchell and Mays about where the future doctors were to practice, Johnson said. Mays wanted no restrictions, but Mitchell insisted they practice in Georgia.
"Georgia is a huge state and it is poor," she wrote in one letter. "It is poor in Negro doctors. I want to better my own state. . . ."
With Johnson's help, Smith hopes to locate other doctors Mitchell assisted.