Dr. James L. Curtis's personal papers contain materials related to Albion, Michigan, as well as correspondence, a diary, awards, his writings in prose, photographs, and materials related to his philanthropic work. His professional papers primarily document Dr. Curtis's dedication to affirmative action and advancing the healthcare field for both marginalized communities and practitioners. Record types include correspondence, research data and notes, publications, patient/client files, student counseling files, reports, topical and reference files, photographs, as well as manuscripts and speeches written by Dr. Curtis. The audio-visual series contains photographs, scanned photographic material, and an oral history. Photographs appear among both personal and professional papers. Folder titles in these series indicate the presence of photographs.
Dr. James L. Curtis was born on April 27, 1922 in Jefferson, Georgia. Within a year of his birth, Curtis's parents moved his family to Albion, Michigan during the first wave of the Great Migration. Curtis attended Albion Public Schools and graduated from Albion High School in 1940. He then began attending Albion College in 1940. He started in the pre-law program and later switched to the pre-medical track. At the time, Albion College had an agreement with the University of Michigan Medical School that a third-year undergraduate student with the necessary qualifications could be admitted to the University of Michigan's medical program and be granted their Bachelor's degree from Albion College following successful completion of their first year of medical school. Curtis took summer classes during his third year at Albion College to meet the admission requirements to ensure his acceptance to the University of Michigan.
Despite his acceptance into the University of Michigan's Medical school, Curtis was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1943 and was ordered to report for duty following the conclusion of his third year. The U.S. Army assigned him to an all-Black Army Specialist Training Program (ASTP) company at Camp Wheeler, Georgia. During his training for the ASTP in the late summer of 1943, Curtis wrote to a professor to explain his situation. With the assistance of the Medical School's dean and an instructor of his, Professor Chickering, Curtis was able to transfer to the ASTP unit at the University of Michigan Medical School just in time to start classes in September 1943. Curtis was the only Black student in his entering class, with two Black students in each class ahead of him.
Given wartime demand for physicians, medical students during this time attended classes year-round. During Curtis's third year, which was devoted to clinical work, his classmates in the obstetrics and gynecology rotation were sent to Women's Hospital in Detroit; however, the Women's Hospital did not want Black students on their ward. Curtis had a choice of three Black teaching hospitals in the nation–Harlem Hospital in New York, Homer G. Philips Hospital in St. Louis, and Provident Hospital in Chicago–and ended up completing that rotation in Chicago, Illinois. He graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School in 1946 with a plan to focus on psychiatric care.
Dr. Curtis completed his residency at Wayne County General Hospital in Michigan, but soon moved to New York with his wife, Vivian (Rawls) Curtis, to continue his post-residency education and practice. During his career in New York, he worked at a variety of different institutions, such as the Long Island College of Medicine (which later became SUNY Downstate Medical Center), Kings County Hospital in Queens, and Harlem Hospital. Dr. Curtis served ten years at Cornell University as the Associate Dean of Student Affairs. It was at Cornell that he began collecting data and researching to advocate for affirmative action in medical schools. As Associate Dean, he became the director of the Minority Student Program and the Chief Executive Officer for Affirmative Action programs for the medical school. In 1982, Dr. Curtis became a professor of Psychiatry and supervised the psychiatry training program at Harlem Hospital at Columbia University. He continued this work for 18 years. His time at Harlem Hospital also coincided with the HIV/AIDS epidemic and in 1993, Dr. Curtis was one of the first psychiatrists to complete training in Addiction Psychiatry in response to the rapidly rising rates of HIV/AIDS cases. His research interests also focused on how to protect the Black community from HIV and AIDS. Given the high numbers of HIV/AIDS cases in Harlem and New York, his education in Addiction Psychiatry helped to inform his research and recommendations regarding the epidemic. Additionally, he researched the impact that race, class, gender, and parenthood have in regards to accessing medical services. Dr. Curtis retired in 2000.
In 2003, Dr. James Curtis moved back to Albion, Michigan with his wife, Vivan (Rawls) Curtis. Throughout his career, he contributed to numerous philanthropic causes, with a central focus on building scholarship funds for students to further their education after high school. In his retirement, Dr. Cutis continues his philanthropic and advocacy work with various organizations to support a wide range of causes. In 2022, he celebrated his 100th birthday in an event sponsored by Albion College.
