Soul Santa

Physician, poet, and playwright Gerald Deas, MD, MPH, is a trailblazer in health advocacy and media. A Brooklyn native, he became the first Black medical columnist for the New York Daily News, served as the chief medical correspondent for Fox television's Emmy-winning McCreary Report, and hosted House Calls, an urban health talk show on WLIB radio.Deas was among the first physicians to harness the power of the media to address health disparities in the Black community. In addition to writing hundreds of articles, poems, and songs, he authored several off-Broadway musicals, including Oh! Oh! Obesity-a gospel-rock, rap-n-roll musical comedy about America's obsession with weight loss.The inspiration for Soul Santa came in the years following the civil rights movement when department store Santas in Deas' Brooklyn neighborhood were all Caucasian. One Christmas, after a chance meeting at a local department store, he traded his white lab coat for a bright red Santa suit-and Soul Santa was born.Soon, Black Santas began appearing in shopping malls across the city. To commemorate this milestone, Deas wrote Soul Santa, a poem about the first Black Santa Claus. In 1971, singer-songwriter Brook Benton recorded it as a song. Fifty years later, the poem endures in holiday radio rotations and now comes to life in this richly illustrated Christmas story set in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn-the neighborhood where Deas grew up.