February 2021 • DALLAS MEDICAL JOURNAL 15
George Lee Shelton Jr., a longtime
Dallas physician and leader in
the Black community, was born in
Vernon, Texas, on June 22, 1922.
He was the son of George Lee Shelton,
Sr. George Jr. was a graduate of Meharry
Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee.
In the late 1940s, Shelton began his
medical practice in Dallas with fellow
physician Emmett Conrad. They offered
their services to the South Dallas Black
community from offices on the 4300 block
of Oakland Avenue. Patients
were many, and payment
often came in the form of a
litter of puppies or a plate of
cupcakes. Shelton earned a
strong reputation as a caring
and dedicated physician and
even made house calls.
In June 1954, Shelton
joined four other men to make
Dallas history in becoming the
first Black doctors to practice
at St. Paul’s Hospital. The
group enjoyed most privileges
at the hospital - the obstetrics
department was barred to
them, apparently due to overcrowding
- but hospital rules
stipulated that only members
of the Texas Medical Association (TMA)
and Dallas County Medical Association
(DCMA) could join the facility medical staff.
After these organizations
removed
their white-only restrictions, Shelton, his
original four colleagues, and two other local
doctors were granted staff membership at
St. Paul’s. Physicians Emmett J. Conrad and
Benjamin E. Howell joined doctors William K.
Flowers Jr., Frank H. Jordan, Lee G. Pinkston,
and Joseph Ralph Williams, along with Shelton,
in their election by the hospital board.
Dallas’s eighteen Black physicians at the
time chose the first applicants from among
their colleagues. Conrad, the only surgeon in
the group, eventually became the hospital’s
chief of staff in 1980.
Shelton served in leadership positions in
many community and fundraising organizations,
including the United Fund, the Youth
Foundation, the Greater Dallas YMCA,
and the American Cancer Society. He held
membership in a number of fraternal and
professional organizations, including
the Idle-wild Cotillion Club,
Dallas’s oldest African American
men’s organization; Psi Beta
Sigma; the American Academy of
Family Physicians; C. V. Roman
Medical Society; and the Dallas
County Medical Society. Shelton
also served on the board of Dallas’s
first integrated bank, Liberty
National Bank of Dallas, when it
opened in a temporary location
at 2610 Forest Avenue in 1964.
In 1973, the South Dallas Business
and Professional Women’s
Club honored Shelton with their
Community Service Award, and
in 2009, Dallas’s Park Board and
community organizers unveiled a
monument to Shelton and other
leading Black Dallas citizens in
Opportunity Park on the city’s
south side.
Shelton was married to Maxine
McGaughey, a Prairie View A&M
nursing graduate, for 48 years.
The couple reared four daughters:
Karen, Helen, Georgetta, and
Jewel. Shelton died from diabetes
complications at Methodist Medical
Center in Dallas on March 24,
1992, at the age of 69. His wife
died just a few days later after
suffering an asthma attack at her
husband’s wake. On March 31,
1992, mourners attended a joint
funeral for the couple at Glendale
Presbyterian Church. The Sheltons
were interred alongside one another
at Lincoln Memorial Cemetery. DMJ
Written an Published by the Texas State
Historical Association, Handbook of Texas
HISTORY IN DALLAS MEDICINE
Dr. George Lee Shelton Jr.
1922–1992