Updates: Photo Series and Reflection Piece on Dr. Tolbert Small

It’s been a little while since I’ve updated my blog — but much has been happening behind the scenes! In 2021, I spent half a year in Oakland, CA working with Dr. Small, recording his oral history, managing his archives, and even learning acupuncture from him. I’ve also continued locating other members of the 1972 Black Panther Party China Trip. This year is the 50th anniversary of the trip — stay tuned for updates in celebration of this milestone.

Last year, I also worked with the journal Asian Medicine to produce a photo essay series and reflection piece on Dr. Small — please take a look for the amazing photographs taken on the China trip!

March 22, 1972: Members of the BPP delegation with barefoot doctors near Nanniwan 南泥灣, a gorge ninety kilometers southeast of Yan’an in Shaanxi Province. The group was given a number of presentations on the healthcare aspect of the revolution in the PRC. As the barefoot doctors movement particularly interested the delegates, their Chinese guides arranged a number of additional question-and-answer sessions for them. Small’s journal entry on this date reveals that he was introduced to cupping techniques and acupuncture for rheumatism at the lecture with the barefoot doctors. The doctors encouraged the delegates to combine Western medicine with traditional medicine, including what the Chinese participants referred to as “traditional Black medicine.” “There were a million barefoot doctors in China,” Small recalls, “and I was inspired by how they integrated Western and Chinese medicine to serve the people.” Dr. Small is in the back, second from right. Photo taken by Ed Sue. From the Tolbert and Anola Small Papers.

Reflections on (Re)making History (abstract):

Who and what makes history? This essay describes how physician-activist Tolbert Small (b. 1942) has been collecting, preserving, and recording his own history, as well as of those around him. Small has been practicing medicine in California’s San Francisco Bay Area since 1968, serving a diversity of patients: from thousands of community members to revolutionaries such as Angela Davis and George Jackson. A physician for the Black Panther Party from 1970 to 1974, Small joined the party’s 1972 delegation to China, where he witnessed acupuncture. He then integrated the practice into his medical toolkit upon returning home. Small’s personal archives document an important chapter of American social and medical history. His stories, along with those of the revolutionaries who introduced acupuncture into New York City’s Lincoln Detox Center during the 1970s, ask us to revisit conventional historical narratives as well as the way in which acupuncture history is made.