Our People of the Century Dr. Leonard Scott: He Ignored Hatred, Bigotry,      Stayed to Care for Hundreds

Times were different in 1938, when a young physician hung his shingle in Bridgeton. Dr. Leonard Scott was the only African American doctor in the area. The Ku Klux Klan burned a cross on his front yard.

Undaunted and armed with two unbeatable allies – commitment and courage – Scott persevered and went on to become one of Cumberland County’s most loved and respected doctors.

In his hands, 982 lives drew their first breaths. He had a clinic in Port Norris to tend to the oyster shuckers. He made house calls, even in the middle of the night, right up to his retirement in 1989 when he was 81.

“I’d get a call at one or two in the morning when the weather was bad, or he was over-tired and didn’t feel he should be driving,” said former Bridgeton school superintendent Thomas Lane IV, a longtime friend and oftentimes driver of Scott.

Patients sometimes paid Scott in eggs or chickens or produce. Regardless, Scott was there for each and every one, no matter what the color of their skin. An extra ten minutes were scheduled just so that Scott could talk with them and see to the healing of both mind and body.

He was one of the original physicians on staff at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Camden when it opened in 1950. And he was admitted as the first black doctor on staff at Bridgeton Hospital in 1958.

A decade later, Scott was elected president of the Cumberland County Medical Society and had already served as president of the New Jersey State Medical Association. He was a graduate of Upsala College and McHarry Medical College, and took post-graduate studies at Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, Hahnemann and Our Lady of Lourdes Hospitals.

Several weeks after Scott’s death in January 1998, his only son, the Rev. Msgr. Leonard Scott of the Camden Roman Catholic Diocese, remembered his father as a devoted husband, loving father, compassionate doctor and courageous man.

The father of two daughters, Jacqueline and Linda, Dr. Scott was married to Rubietta (Johnson).

He taught his children not to let prejudice be a roadblock.

Hoping his son would follow in his father’s physician footsteps, Scott was a little disappointed but very supportive in his son’s decision to become a priest. The family was ready to move out of New Jersey in 1960, when it was questionable as to whether the new bishop would ordain a black seminarian.

Scott both healed and inspired.

“He would go back and talk to school groups, and then tell them to work hard, study hard, and do whatever God gave them the talent to do,” his son said. “That’s what he taught us to do, and that’s what he did with his life.”