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RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
It's Friday and time for StoryCorps. Dr. Jenna Lester's grandmother was one of the first African-American nurse practitioners in New York. A generation later, Jenna's mother Sharon Brangman became a doctor. And she tells Jenna it was her own mother's determination that set her on the path.
SHARON BRANGMAN: I was probably about 10 years old, and I had already decided I was going to be a doctor. But the guidance counselor put me into typing, home economics. And I came home with my books. And grandmother was like, oh, no way. And I remember she went up to the school and said, I want my daughter transferred, so she could go to college.
JENNA LESTER: Tell me about your medical school experience.
BRANGMAN: There was one professor. He would take a picture of an old Negro League baseball player holding a bat and start talking about the muscles using black dialect. He would show us Playboy centerfold when he was talking about anatomy. And when you were taking a really hard test, he would walk behind, linger over your shoulder. And he had this horrible pipe. You'd hear a little puff sound and smell the smoke come over you. And he would do that to all the black students.
So this was the classroom. And I remember my mother telling me it doesn't matter if the teacher likes you or not, your job is to learn. I mean she didn't go to college. But if she had come up in a different era, I think she would have been the first physician in the family. Was there a moment growing up when you realized what I did?
LESTER: Well, I remember knowing you were a doctor. I guess, my earliest memory is when you came to the first grade classroom to dissect cow hearts.
BRANGMAN: Oh, yeah, that's right.
LESTER: And then you cut them open, and you were like showing us the valves and the different chambers of the heart. And I was like, wow, this is so cool. The typical person who has a long line of doctors in their family are like these often white men that I sit next to in class whose father, grandfather, great-grandfather were doctors. And it's cool to be a part of the same thing, but that looks very different. To realize all the things that you had to go through and that Grandma had to go through to get me to where I am today, I feel like I'm working for a little bit more than just myself.
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MARTIN: That was Sharon Brangman and Jenna Lester at StoryCorps in New York City. Jenna is finishing her residency in dermatology in California. Their conversation will be archived at the Library of Congress.