Dr. Stallworth was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama during the 1940s, 50s, and early 60s. Crossed the Alabama state line for the first time at 16 years old to attend Howard University in Washington D.C.
Received a medical degree from Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee. Completed his medical internship at Case Western Reserve Youngstown Hospital Association, and his anesthesiology residency at UCLA-Harbor General Hospital. Received a Master of Business Administration degree from California State University, Dominguez Hills. Completed the first year of a two-year Master of Fine Arts program at UCLA (illness).
Served as Chief of Anesthesia at a hospital in Los Angeles for 20 years, beginning at age 29, and had a medical practice for over 20 years as an anesthesiologist for cosmetic surgery centers in Beverly Hills, California.
Owned and operated the Otto E. Stallworth Jr. MD Pain Management Center and the Hickman Pain Management in Santa Monica, California from 1975 until 1987.
Outside of medicine, he had several businesses, including Oh Yes! Management, Oh Yes! Business Management, and Hollywood Fries Restaurant.
At his personal management company, Oh Yes! Management, he discovered and secured a record deal for Taste of Honey, the first Black artist in the 22-year history of the Grammys to win the award for Best New Artist in 1979, for their song Platinum record “Boogie Oogie Oogie.”
His Hollywood Fries Restaurant in Westwood/UCLA section of Los Angeles was created with partners Hollywood Casting Director Reuben Cannon, actor Danny Glover, and Pepsi executive Olden Lee, and closed in 2005, a casualty of post-9/11 economics.
Dr. Stallworth began a slow retirement in 2016 and pursued his hidden love for writing through a Master of Fine Arts program at UCLA. He could not complete the program after the first year because of a short-term illness, but in his time there, he completed a screenplay, “Murder at BeautyWorld,” which is to be the title of his next book based on the screenplay.
In 2018, Denise Nicholas, award-winning actress and author of the acclaimed book “Freshwater Road,” invited him to join her Longwood Writers’ Workshop, where “Are You a N****r or a Doctor?” a Memoir, was conceived.
In 2022, Dr. Stallworth formed the Stallworth OhYes! Foundation, a private foundation, that funded full four-year scholarships at Howard University and Meharry Medical College, his alma maters.
“This thoughtful memoir is more impressionistic than documentary. In place of a comprehensive autobiography, the author provides a pastiche of anecdotes, some relating to racial identity. His writing style is unadorned, his delivery an easy and almost intimately familiar one (“I had not traveled by airplane, train, bus, boat, or even a taxi, but I boarded that train without a second thought, with no hesitation, curious to see what was inside of ‘The Southerner,’ which was a silver, streamlined train”).”
– Kirkus Reviews
BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
"ARE YOU A N****R OR A DOCTOR?"
BY Otto Stallworth Jr MD • POSTED ON Feb. 14, 2023
Stallworth reflects on his experience growing up as a Black child in the 1950s and ’60s in segregated Birmingham and his subsequent career as a doctor.
Stallworth grew up in Lincoln Park, a “Colored neighborhood” in Birmingham, Alabama, before the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a time during which Martin Luther King Jr. called Birmingham “the most segregated city in the United States.” Schools, trains, water fountains, even dressing rooms in clothing stores were segregated. As the author observes: “My first required reading was the Jim Crow ‘White Only’ and ‘Colored Only’ signs plastered everywhere, even on city buses.” He didn’t cross the city line and leave Birmingham until he was 16, when he attended Howard University with the lifelong hope of becoming a doctor. He graduated from Meharry Medical College and became an anesthesiologist, but even after such accomplishment, bigotry continued to doggedly pursue him. A White patient, astonished at the sight of him, asked the question that became the title of Stallworth’s book. This thoughtful memoir is more impressionistic than documentary. In place of a comprehensive autobiography, the author provides a pastiche of anecdotes, some relating to racial identity. His writing style is unadorned, his delivery an easy and almost intimately familiar one (“I had not traveled by airplane, train, bus, boat, or even a taxi, but I boarded that train without a second thought, with no hesitation, curious to see what was inside of ‘The Southerner,’ which was a silver, streamlined train”). The stories he conveys are captivating and astutely tied into the tumultuous history of the times. The author recounts when he learned of Emmett Till’s brutal murder. He was not quite 10 at the time and saw Till’s mutilated face on the cover of Jet magazine, which he delivered. This is an extraordinary remembrance—as emotionally affecting as it is historically edifying.
A fascinating, moving memoir that focuses on one of the most tempestuous periods in American history.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2023
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