About Otto E. Stallworth Jr., MD, MBA
Dr. Stallworth was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama during the 1940s, 50s, and early 60s. Crossed the Alabama state line for the first time at 16 to attend college. Graduated and became the first college graduate in his family. Followed by a medical degree at 24 and later an MBA.
Outside of medicine, he had several businesses, including Oh Yes! Management and Hollywood Fries Restaurant.
As personal manager, he discovered and secured a record deal for Taste of Honey, the first Black artist in the 22-year history of the Grammys to win the award for “Best New Artist,” for their mega-hit song “Boogie Oogie Oogie” in 1979.
The Hollywood Fries Restaurant, in the Westwood/UCLA area, opened in 1999 with his partners Hollywood Casting Director Reuben Cannon, actor Danny Glover, and Pepsi executive Olden Lee. The restaurant closed in 2005 before the second location opened, a casualty of post 9/11 economics.
He began a slow retirement in 2016 and pursued his hidden love for writing and enrolled in the Master of Fine Arts program at UCLA. Completed just one year of the two-year program because of a short-term illness, but completed a screenplay—“Murder at BeautyWorld,”— a fictional murder mystery, and the title of his next book.
In 2018, Denise Nicholas, award-winning actress and author of acclaimed book “Freshwater Road,” invited him to join her Longwood Writers’ Workshop, where this memoir, “Are you A N####r or a Doctor,” was conceived, and then delivered December 23, 2022.
In early 2022, he began a non-profit foundation, the Stallworth OhYes! Foundation, which awarded four-year full scholarships to students at Howard University in Washington, D.C. and Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, his alma maters, in August, 2022.
His goal is to award many more scholarships from donations to the Stallworth OhYes! Foundation.
You can find information by clicking on Stallworth Foundation above and:
“Be a Rainbow in a Needy Student’s Cloud.”
Subscribe to my email list.
Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates.
Longwood Writers’ Workgroup
As pointed out above, in May 2018, Denise Nicholas urged me to join her Longwood Writers’ Workshop. It was the best writing decision I’ve made. Met every two weeks with Denise and four other smart, creative, and inspiring individuals. But make no mistake, Denise Nicholas was our teacher, our leader, our driving force. And she didn’t hold back. She was serious and passionate about writing. On her way to completing her award-winning novel, “Freshwater Road,” she studied writing and brought that experience and other professional writers to the Longwood table. When the writing was bad, she was gentle with her critique but honest and direct and, what was most valuable, she gave strategies to improve.
Whenever I wrote, rather alone at home, on a plane, or in a place like Starbucks, I heard her stern and brilliant voice that provided us continuous pearls of wisdom.
We met every two weeks for about two years before the Covid pandemic led to a hiatus, a three-year hiatus, from which we are just emerging in 2023. Zoom didn’t work for many reasons, but, during that dreadful Covid season, we continued, in many other ways, to support each other’s efforts in our writing and in personal life matters, of which there were many.
Below are photos taken about a year before the pandemic began:
Longwood Writers’ Workshop 2019
Chas. Floyd Johnson, Denise Billings, Hattie Winston Wheeler, Denise Nichols, Gwen Williams, Otto Stallworth, Jr.
