Racism at the Springfield Clinic

4/28/2007

Editor:

There are pictures of the Confederate flag, Confederate generals, including one of the founders of the Ku Klux Klan on exhibit in Springfield. They are displayed not at an art gallery or museum but in the exam rooms of the main campus of the Springfield Clinic!

I was treated at the Clinic for a splinter. There was a picture of a handsome confederate soldier, bloody but unbowed, proudly holding aloft the Confederate flag. I commented to the doctor that I didn’t think it appropriate for that to be displayed. It was not the first complaint; there were others about a portrait of General Bedford Forrest, one of the founders of the Ku Klux Klan.

I emailed Springfield Clinic. I did not hear from them for a week. I sent them another email. I received a call several days later telling me my “feedback” had been sent to another level of management. That higher level said my “feedback” had been sent to an even higher level of management. They would be holding a closed meeting to determine what to do.

Chief Operating Officer, Caroline Otten told me after that meeting that the art work would stay on the walls of the examination rooms. “There is Civil War memorabilia all over Springfield”, she said. “We are just blocks away from the Abraham Lincoln Museum”. I agreed that was true and asked if the Clinic was giving the Confederacy equal time. She hung up.

Ms. Otten said the art in question was not in bad taste. The Confederate flag is a symbol of bigotry and racism. We rejoice that the Union won the civil war and put an end to slavery. Even today the flag of the Confederacy represents hatred, violence and death.

If the leadership of Springfield Clinic wants to share these displays they should donate them to a museum or rent an art gallery.

Springfield Clinic should remove these representations of racism immediately.