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MOVING UP....

EMPLOYMENT: In 1972 she was appointed to a four-year term as a member of National Advisory and Drug Committee in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. The Committee reviews and evaluates programs of the Food and Drug Administration and makes recommendations to the FDA Commissioner.

VOLUNTEER ACTIVITIES: Mrs. Moon is chairman of the National Urban League Guild of which she is the founder. Mrs. Moon was elected as the first President of the Council of Urban League Guilds in Cleveland, Ohio at the Urban League Conference in 1952.

In 1950 she won a law suit against the elegant and exclusive Pierre Hotel in New York City which had refused to rent their much desirable ballroom to the Guild for a benefit affair.

The Guild is an auxiliary of National Urban League organized to raise funds for and help promote the goals of the parent body. The Guild has raised more than $500,000.00 for the League during the last quarter of a century. Mrs. Moon has also served as a member of the National Urban League's Board of Directors, including seven years as Board Secretary. Success of the national Guild stimulated organization of local guilds throughout the country. There are currently eighty-one Urban League Guilds across the country.

Other volunteer activities include membership on the boards of The Ladies of Charity, Sickle Cell Disease Foundation, and Catholic Interracial Council. She is also a member of the Executive Board of the Coalition of 100 Black Women.

She is a long-time member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority.

MARITAL STATUS: Married to Henry Lee Moon, long-term Dirctor of Public Relations for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and former editor of the Association's official magazine, The Crisis. They have a daughter, Mrs. Stephen Elliot and four lovely grandchildren.

RELIGION: Roman Catholic

OTHER: Mrs. Moon has traveled extensively throughout the United States as well as Europe, Asia and Africa. In their Queens apartment, the Moons have often been hosts of distinguished guests, foreign as well as American. In September, 1975, she was a member of a distinguished group of Americans who were invited by the Government of Iran to serve as a participant in the ten-day Aspen Institute/Persepolis Symposium.

[[image - portrait of Pearl Foster]]

When Pearl Foster told her pre-med adviser at Queens College in 1939 that she wanted to go to medical school he told her that she had three strikes against her—she was black, she was a woman, and she was a Catholic. She had a lot going for her too, though. She was smart, she was determined, and she had a family behind her who told her to be the best always at whatever she did.

Dr. Alfred Huetner looked at his other two pre-med students that year with a sigh too. To one he said, "We are going to have trouble getting you into medical school because you are Italian and they don't take Italians and because you are Catholic." To the other he said, "We are going to have trouble with you because you are a woman and they aren't taking Jews." And then he turned to Pearl and shook his head.

"But don't worry," he said quickly. "Do as well as you did in high school and I will get you all into medical schools." And he did.

Dr. Pearl D. Foster, chosen by the Alumni Association as Distinguished Alumna of the Year, has lived a life full of accomplishment. It has included a wide range of scientific endeavors from working on the atomic bomb in 1944 to cancer research, to treating three-generational families in her St. Albans office, to serving as first vice president of a national medical review board and on the medical boards of Hillcrest General and Harlem Hospitals. She will be honored by the Alumni Association at Commencement Ceremonies.

Pearl Foster went into medicine because her Jamaica High School adviser said that since she was graduating so young (she was sixteen) rather than be a nun or a nurse (her original choices) she should consider medicine.

"I went to Queens College with the idea of going into medicine. I had a double major in chemistry and biology and my double major really prepared me for the job market," Dr. Foster recalls. "Dr. Huetner was not only my mentor in biology and I worked with him on his book The Embriology of the Pig, doing some of the histopathology for it for my honors course. In those days only 200 students were accepted to the school per year. We were a family. The instructors were compassionate, interested and caring. If you didn't do your work they would knock you on your butt in so many words and say you are not living up to your potential."

She added "I never would have gone to college if there had not been a public college. My family couldn't have afforded it."

At Queens College, she said, "Our professors were dedicated professionals,. interested in you as a person, and wonderful teachers like Hortense Powdermaker, Harold Blatt in chemistry, Dr. Lancefield Kilpatrick, Dr. Whittaker in chemistry, Dr. Hoffman in logic, who was a fantastic man, and Barry Commoner, who as a young graduate student, taught me botany."

When she graduated, while waiting to get into medical school, she worked for the Army at Fort Monmouth as a chemist, for the Department of Health as a bacteriologist, and when that job ended, was hired to work on the atomic bomb in the SAM Laboratories at Columbia University.

Asked whether it wasn't unusual for a black woman to be doing all that in those days, she responded tartly, "In this society it is always unusual for a black person to be doing anything. Being a member of any ethnic minority you almost have to be schizoid or paranoid. People say things and they are not even aware of what they have said. Even today when I walk in to see a new patient in the hospital they say with surprise, 'Oh you're the doctor.' I personally believe each person is a person. I have always been made to believe that I as a person can reach the highest level. I don't ask for any special benefits of for the lowering of standards. I want to be accepted on the criteria you have established for everyone else."

Dr. Foster grew up in the only black family on her block, but she was never an outsider. Her friends' grandparents were her surrogate grandparents. They taught her German and Italian, invited her to seders, and noticed if she didn't come home on time.

"I never thought I was different until I went for my first job in 1937 when Kent Cleaners opened their first store in Queens. I went with my two best friends, one Italian, one Jewish. We were the first three in line. They took information for an application from my Italian friend. I was second and they told me, 'We don't hire colored.' I was stunned. I felt disgraced. My friends saw how upset I was and they said they would not work there either. My Jewish friend said something I will never forget. 'When they see my name they stop, but you carry your badge all the time."

That was far from the last time she experienced such an attitude but now she knows it is the other person's loss. She went to Howard University College of Medicine, graduating with an M.D. degree n 1948. She did her residency in internal medicine at Freedman's Hospital in Washington, D.C.

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Transcription Notes:
Corrected many transcription errors. ~EJ