On May 25, 2020, 6:35 P.M., Pacific, a Great Man died, in California, 50 minutes before George Floyd, in Minnesota..

Just 50 minutes later, another Great Man, George Floyd, was asphyxiated, by a cop, just like others, half of a continent away, and 28 years after Rodney King was beaten on video!

But Dr. Silas Jay Thomas, II was always available to the sick, injured, and those unable to.pay for their medical services, initially rendered as the Pharmacist at the first, and, therefore, in 1960, the ONLY Black-Owned Rexall Retail Drugstore, located at 1340 E 63rd St., Chicago, IL 60637, owing to the fact of ongoing resistance at every earlier time [including the entirety of the history of the most popular radio show in the history of broadcast radio, (The Amos ‘n’ Andy Show, 1927-1960) through the founding of The Rexall Company, to minority franchising.

Only 33 years later he would be the first OB/Gyn MD, in medical history, to succeed in delivering any child , and her mother, safely, whose mother’s abdomen had been penetrated by a stray bullet.

LEFEL Rexall Drugs, Inc. was purchased intact to secure the franchise that came with it, since direct purchase from the company by any person of color was impossible in the Autumn of 1960.

He had just graduated from Drake University as a pharmacist and his father wanted him to own a store, rather than just work at one, as he had, each Summer, during his undergraduate work at Drake. He was the FIRST Black Pharmacy graduate in the history of Drake University.

The father had worked at the original Walgreens drug store, 30 years prior.

Silas J. Thomas, Sr., had only to sweep out that store, as any higher aspirations were not available as the Great Depression settled in for a long stay from October 1929, when he first arrived in Chicago, Illinois, until 1939, a year after the birth of this great man, whose birth caused his father, now married, and with two sons to transfer his debit at one insurance firm to another in 1938.

Focusing on his family’s progress as a unit, the father held on to the dream as his wife and he conceived a third child, a daughter, whose life would begin in 1940, as her mother’s ended in the act of childbirth, and the great man, watching his mother die, and never return home, noted his future aspirations in medicine, at only 2 years of age.

Forging on, the father, now widowed, and with three children, and a more than full time job,would be assisted by his sisters, in the care of the baby daughter, until 1943, when my mother and he would meet, wed, and her child from an earlier marriage would make the family too large for the tastes of many landlords as to allowable family size.

So, for a few years that size remained 6 persons, 3 sons, a daughter a wife, and the father.

I was born to them at the very end of WWII, in August, 1945, and an additional two sons followed in 1948 and 1950, with a final child, a daughter, born in 1957, making the family size 10 persons.

Of those persons, only 5 of us survive, since 8:30 or so on last night May 25, 2020.

Rest In Peace:

E. Dimmitt Thomas

Debra Lee Thomas

Beatrice Thomas Tillman

Beulah Thomas Slocum Hiller

Emma Lee Thomas

Silas J Thomas, Sr

James Earnest Hansbrough

And

Dr. Silas J Thomas, II