This tree is anchored on Dr. Gordon Alexander "Doc" Rodgers Jr. — his parents and siblings above him, his wife beside him, and his four children below. Every entry is cited; where the family's own memory and the documentary record don't fully agree, we say so rather than guess.
Family Features
Two Brothers, Two Firsts
Gordon and his younger brother Samuel grew up in the same Anniston household, sons of a Meharry-trained physician. Both went into the health professions, and both spent their careers pushing open doors that had been closed to Black Americans.
In 1968, Gordon became the first Black member elected to the Anniston City Council. That same year, in Kansas City, Samuel opened what would become the first federally qualified community health center in Missouri — a clinic that still carries his name, the Samuel U. Rodgers Health Center.
Their sister Frances spent about two decades teaching in the Anniston schools that had once limited how far a Black child in that city could go.
Meharry Medical College in Nashville, founded to train Black physicians and dentists, ran through three generations of the Rodgers family. Gordon A. Rodgers Sr. earned his M.D. there in 1908. His son, Gordon Jr., followed him to Meharry's dental school, graduating in 1941. And Gordon Jr.'s daughter, Dr. Beverly Rodgers, earned her D.D.S. there in 1987, continuing her father's practice in Anniston.
That thread continues through the Dr. Gordon A. Rodgers Sr. and Jr. Legacy Scholarship at Meharry, established by Beverly in honor of her grandfather and her father.