“I don’t think as a kid I ever saw a minority physician.”
These are the words of Russel J. Ledet, a second-year medical student at Tulane University School of Medicine. Ledet is an African American, and like many of his peers, he grew up in a community where he rarely saw black people in positions of authority or prestige.
To show the world that times are changing, Ledet approached his fellow black students with the idea of having an informal photoshoot at the Whitney Plantation, the only plantation museum in Louisiana with an exclusive focus on the lives of enslaved people. The idea took off, and soon enough 15 African American students were on their way to the former plantation.
Wearing the short white coats that symbolize their status as a doctor in training, the students posed in front of old slave quarters and took some incredibly powerful shots. Ledet posted one photo on Twitter with the caption “Our Moment of Resiliency”. Within a matter of days, the photo racked up more than 70,000 views and nearly 17,000 retweets.
One of the students who featured in the photo, Sydney Labat, said the photo shows that “you can be smart, you can be a doctor, you can be unapologetically black — all of those simultaneously.”
What an incredible scene.
