Josephine D. Martin Papers

Josephine Diaz Martin was born in Tampa, Florida, on December 31, 1915, the daughter of a cigar maker who emigrated from Spain. During her childhood, the family moved to New York City, where she completed her elementary and secondary education. She received her bachelor's degree from Hunter College in 1945; earned her M.D. from State University of New York College of Medicine in 1954; and did post-graduate work at West London Hospital School of Medicine from 1955-1956. She served as senior house officer in psychiatry at University College and St. Pancras Hospital in London, England in 1958, and she completed her residency in psychiatry at Bellevue Medical Center in New York in 1962.

As a teenager, Josephine was diagnosed with tuberculosis and spent two years in a sanatorium. While there, she met fellow patient and social worker, Earl Martin, whom she married when she was 19. Together, the two fought to secure better treatment for tuberculosis patients. She and Earl Martin later divorced, and Josephine married Cedric H. Belfrage, British-born founder and co-editor of the leftist weekly, "The National Guardian". In 1955, Belfrage was deported to England for refusing to tell Senator Joseph McCarthy's Committee whether he was or ever had been a Communist. Dr. Martin accompanied her husband to England, and while in London, she worked for the National Health System. She returned to New York in 1958 to help care for two nephews whose mother had died of cancer. After a lengthy separation, she and Cedric Belfrage were divorced, and in 1967, she married Dr. Robert J. Schwartz, a New York banker and longtime friend.

Dr. Martin served for ten years in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at New York University's Bellevue Hospital. In 1968 she left Bellevue to pursue more direct community work. In the ensuing years, she held a variety of positions in hospitals and organizations, including Director of Children’s Neighborhood Care Teams in the Department of Community Psychiatry of Roosevelt Hospital and then at William F. Ryan Community Health Center. She was also involved in a series of clinical community care programs for the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services (JBFCS), including a juvenile diagnostic center for court referrals (Geller House); an educational and clinical day care program for troubled adolescents (West Side School); and finally, a JBFCS-sponsored project for homeless families in a “welfare” hotel (Regent Hotel).

In the 1960s, Dr. Martin also developed a keen interest in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. In 1964, as a member of the Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR), she traveled to Mississippi, where she worked in the Mississippi Child Development Center (forerunner of the Head Start program). As a result, she developed lasting friendships with such Mississippi civil rights pioneers as Bob Moses, James Forman, and Unita Blackwell. In 1991 Dr. Martin was the recipient of the American Orthopsychiatric Association’s Vera S. Paster Award, which is given to people who have contributed significantly to the well-being of persons of color.

Dr. Josephine Martin died July 6, 2000 at the age of 84. At a memorial service held in her honor on September 12, 2000, her husband Dr. Robert Schwartz said, "Jo was an angel, and if there were enough like her, the lion would lie down with the lamb and the problems of world conflict, human and environmental destructiveness would be no more."