3 black teens pushed each other to become doctors. Now they're helping others do the same.

For people who don’t believe in God, suspend your disbelief for a moment.

Because I need to tell you about how three black boys from three different cities escaped dire circumstances, met at Xavier University in Louisiana and pledged to help each other become doctors.

They say God brought them together and kept them together until the last one had graduated medical school, until the last rotation was completed, until they opened their own practices. Now, they help pay to educate young men and women who look like them, to make sure they are not the last.

Only about 5 percent of practicing physicians in 2015 were black, compared with a 13 percent African American population, according to a 2015 New York Times report. So these three are spending part of their salaries providing scholarships for future doctors. That is what black Americans must do, not just in Detroit but across the country: We must stop asking others to do what we must do for our children.

The three doctors put themselves in a position to help by sharing their stories in a new book, “Pulse of Perseverance: Three Black Doctors on Their Journey to Success.” Their goal is to tell their stories to as many young people as possible.

Basketball or medicine? A crossroads, a choice

Dr. Pierre Johnson is a 38-year-old obstetrician-gynecologist at Chicago Metropolitan Hospital. But 35 years ago, he remembers running.

“I was 3 years old. My mother and I were running frantically down the street. I remember exactly where we were because we ran past my preschool. We were running from my father, who was high out of his mind, with a disheveled appearance in jeans and a sleeveless undershirt.”

That is from one of his chapters in “Pulse of Perseverance.” In an interview, he recalls that “I grew up on the South Side of Chicago, and I really wanted to play sports … But when I got to college, I realized that I was under-prepared for the curriculum and it really came to a crossroads. Will I continue the rigors for something that wasn’t going to be fruitful? Or would I give it up and put my efforts into school. I was humbled, and I realized that one had to go.”

He chose medicine over basketball.

“I was challenged by my aunt. I wanted to play professional basketball. She told me to create Plan B,” he said. “My parents were both addicted to drugs, and as a kid, I saw a lot of violence and destruction. And I wanted better for my life. ... I knew what I had to do to academically to get to a level of success. I was very fascinated by obstetrics and childbirth and I was very good with my hands, dexterity, so I thought that was something I definitely wanted to pursue.”

Black leaders at hospital 'changed my life'

Dr. Max Madhere, 38, is a cardiac anesthesiologist in Baton Rouge, La. But as a child, Madhere was caught in the middle of a devastating divorce between his father and his mentally ill mother. His father moved him away from their mother to Washington, D.C. for a life safer than the one they were living in Brooklyn. His father would teach statistics at Howard University until his recent retirement.

“My father provided the first imprint of strong male leadership in my life,” he said. “The biggest thing he did for me early on was to talk about the struggles of black people in general, the story of African-Americans in America, everything they had to deal with, everything they had to go through. …when I was in school, I tried to stay on task.

“I grew up during the tail end of the crack era, so even though I had positive influences in my home, dad couldn’t protect my siblings and me from the things we encountered in the neighborhoods,” he said. “I became a doctor because when we moved to Washington when it was still considered Chocolate City, the high school I went to was across the street from Howard University Hospital."

To meet a required 200-hour community service requirement to graduate, Madhere said he was “lazy” and went across the street to the nearby hospital.

“That changed my entire life,” he said. “I volunteered just to be an orderly, but what I saw was black people in positions of leadership, making key decisions every day, impacting people’s lives. So from that time on, I said 'I’m going to be a physician.' I kept my eyes on the prize and never changed.”

A drug dealer until a role model was murdered

Dr. Joseph Semien is a 40-year-old obstetrician-gynecologist at Lake Charles Memorial Hospital in Lake Charles, La. Despite being the son of a strong Christian couple who are still married at 45 years and counting, he was a disruptive student (even hitting a teacher in elementary school) and he became a drug dealer.

“My dad definitely inspired us, but he lacked education,” Semien said. “My dad had a third-grade education. …One of the things I was exposed to was drugs. After seeing these things around me, I began to be curious, and I began to sell drugs myself."

His life changed with a devastating wake-up call. “On Oct. 14, 1996, when someone that I looked up to, someone that I felt inspired me in my life, was murdered. He was shot nine times,” he said. “At that moment, all of my dreams, everything that I wanted to do in my life that everyone said that I couldn’t accomplish, I was willing and pushed to pursue my goals. I wanted to become a doctor before I sold drugs. I wanted to become a doctor when my mom was in her room praying for me. I wanted to become a doctor when I was at home looking at all the animals around me (in science class), and dissecting them.”

He decided to swap out the people in his life, find those who could inspire, and hunker down.

'We started to push each other'

The doctors met at Xavier University of Louisiana, which they credit with paving their way to different medical schools and their current success. It was the place their bond was formed and their pledge to make each other doctors was sealed.

They met in the library. “When we found each other, we were all clinically depressed," Johnson said. “Maxime’s from New York, and I’m from Chicago. And first we talked about Knicks and Bulls… But we looked at each other and saw just a look of determination… and even though we were both doing poorly at that time, we knew that we had the drive that nobody could put their finger on, so we really connected in the library. And …we started to push each other.”

A couple of weeks later, they saw "another guy just sitting there with books sprawled out on the table, and we started up a conversation.” That frustrated young man was Joseph Semien. And from that point through their arduous journeys at different medical schools across the country, they shared study guides, time and encouragement.

Years of success later, each of the doctors realized that their personal achievement was not enough. “I remember sitting in my office one day… and I looked on my wall and I saw all the degrees, my masters, my medical school degree,” Simeon said. “I was trying to figure out why I was not as happy as I should be…. It was because I needed to share something with someone else, to push someone not to achieve my goals, but even do better to go beyond what I had done.”

Madhere spoke of living in a 5,000-square foot home with his wife and three kids in a tony neighborhood and seeing no one who looked like him. Around that time, he said, "That was when Trayvon (Martin) got shot. That’s when Tamir Rice died. That’s when Eric Garner died. Philando Castile died… God was tugging on our shoulders, saying 'Hey, you guys have got to do something.'"

Their success wouldn’t matter as much if they didn’t change the paradigm, Madhere said. That includes helping people to stop seeing black excellence as an anomaly.

“As I walk through the hospitals, I don’t change myself, mohawk, earrings, tattoos. Like the kids say, I keep it 100,” Johnson said. “To watch how people look at me…When I walk into a room, I’m everything in their eyes but a surgeon... And that’s not only from my colleagues. That’s from people who look like us. That’s what hurts me.”

When he visits schools, "we don’t dress like this,” he said, pointing to his suit. “We keep it 100, jogging suits. We want to show them we’re not different than you. The first question we ask is: What do we look like? And we get everything from rappers to party promoters. But then they see the book and the white coats, and it’s ‘O-h-h-h-h.' We’re tired of that narrative. We’re tired of the stereotypes. If we don’t believe it, how in the hell we going to get everybody else to believe it?”

One recent Friday night in Detroit at a mentoring event, the doctors got the chance to teach that lesson to Isaiah Bell, 14, a self-declared future neurosurgeon. “Was it hard for you to come together and be like brothers?” he asked.

“What we understood was there is enough for everyone at the top,” Johnson told him. “We knew that together is much easier than trying to do this on our own. You have to realize that everybody in your school is not going to be on your side, but there’s two or three trying to do exactly what you’re trying to do, and that’s who you have to surround yourself with.”

Semien added: “All three of us will tell you we’re not highly intelligent super-geniuses. We just worked really hard. When I talk to kids, they say man, ‘Doc, you’re like one of us, and I tell them I AM one of you.'”

And that’s how three boys whose beginnings didn’t predict their ends became doctors, kept their finger on the pulse of perseverance, and are making sure that in the future, others will be able to tell similar success stories.

Rochelle Riley is a columnist at the Detroit Free Press, where this piece first appeared, and author of “The Burden: African Americans and the Enduring Impact of Slavery.” Follow her on Twitter @rochelleriley

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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: 3 black teens pushed each other to become doctors. Now they're helping others do the same.