Jackson Free Press

Alvin Poussaint's career reads like a hopscotch game across the touchstones of post-World War II African American history. Born in 1934, Poussaint earned a medical degree at Cornell University and studied psychiatry at UCLA before joining the Civil Rights Movement.

From 1965 to 1967, he was southern field director for the Medical Committee for Human Rights at its Jackson office at 507-1/2 Farish Street. There, he helped treat workers from the many civil-rights groups located around Farish Street, including the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and the NAACP. The Medical Committee also operated a clinic in Holmes County and provided medical care for demonstrators around the state. When the state and local police attacked and threw tear gas at hundreds of marchers outside Canton in James Meredith's 1966 March Against Fear, Poussaint's group cared for them.

In the 1980s and 1990s, he worked on "The Cosby Show," to ensure that it provided positive images of African Americans. Poussaint teaches and writes widely about the psychology of racism, issues in raising African American children and the effects of media on children.

Why did you join the Medical Committee for Human Rights in Mississippi?
I felt that the biggest mental-health problem was segregation and discrimination in the United States. That led to low feelings of self-esteem, a whole lot of stress and anxiety. If you could eliminate these social ills, and blacks could move into the mainstream, a lot of the pressures on them as individuals would diminish.

I felt that, by helping to desegregate health facilities and mental-health facilities, conditions for blacks would improve. At that time I had just finished my training. I didn't see doing one-on-one (therapy) with black people (as) the answer. You needed a systemic approach to the problem.

I still feel that's very important, not just in terms of discrimination and desegregation, but also the types of community programs you have, the types of schools you have, the types of supports you have for families. That's going to affect the mental health of black people much more than dealing with the individual illnesses.

What was Jackson like when you came down here?
I came down in ‘65. Things were just beginning to open up a little bit, but no one was welcoming to you. If we went to a downtown cafeteria, you could see the stony faces and so on, but they wouldn't say anything. Then there were other places that would refuse you. ... I remember the laundry I took my clothes to. They had a black side and a white side. Black people's clothes were only allowed on the black side, very clearly. They didn't have a sign, but they just had two different sides.

Most of the time, I hung out on Farish Street, which was just a hub of activity. The last time I was in Jackson, years ago, I was really surprised by how the whole area seemed dead. I remember the area just bustling with civil-rights activity, lawyers groups, medical groups and people walking down the street. They had restaurants, a couple of them there, that were very popular—black restaurants, where we'd all eat lunch and gather for meetings.

Tell me about the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, which you helped launch in 2000.
We were very concerned about the advertising of fast food and junk food to children—which goes on extensively in all children's programs—because of the obesity epidemic. ...We felt that that's a public-health issue. ... Kids tend to believe advertisers and are very vulnerable to their strategies, so we carried on campaigns against advertising that we felt was detrimental to children.

Is there a mental-health-specific perspective that advertising is dangerous to children?
Well, we feel that it promotes certain types of values. Advertising wants to make consumers out of kids. ... It makes them want to be competitive about material things, who's got what and who's wearing what clothes. You see even in elementary school, kids rejecting or accepting kids depending on whether they have certain kinds of sneakers and clothes. It promotes a kind of malignant individualism sometimes. ... Also making kids believe that they have to possess these goods in order to feel self-esteem.

What's the next campaign frontier?
We're trying to promote play, because play is the best way for children to learn. We're doing that, and we're also campaigning to reduce the amount of time that children spend with media. That's also part of the obesity epidemic. It's bad for both their mental and physical health to be so absorbed in media and to see the world in terms of entertainment.

Poussaint visits the University of Mississippi Medical Center this week. At noon on Feb. 18, Poussaint will deliver a speech, open to the public, on diversity and multiculturalism in the lower amphitheater at the school of medicine. For more information and to RSVP for the event, contact Chris Taylor at 601-984-1340.