As a military hospital, Walter Reed provided advanced care for active and former service members and their families, on both an inpatient and an outpatient basis. Retired pediatrician Dr. DeMaurice Moses recalled the caring treatment he received as a child in the early 1940s. This was during the segregation era in Washington. While his father served in the Pacific in the U.S. Army during World War II, Dr. Moses lived with his grandmother on Tenth Street in the Shaw neighborhood. He was about 8 years old when she brought him to Walter Reed to be treated for a stammer. It was the first time he’d encountered a White person. “To come here and be treated — because I knew I couldn’t be treated by anyone who was White, who lived elsewhere. So everyone was friendly. It was totally different than the experience I had in D.C. and it wasn’t lost on me that this place was very different.”
History Project, Dr. Jarvis and Dr. Moses: Full-Length Interview