Elders featured on AETN tonight (from Arkansas News)

LITTLE ROCK — Dr. Joycelyn Elders, a lightning rod for criticism for her views on sex education as Arkansas health director and the first black U.S. surgeon general, will discuss her life in an interview tonight on the Arkansas Educational Television Network.

The one-on-one interview, part of AETN’s “Men and Women of Distinction” series, is scheduled to air at 9:30 p.m.

Elders, 76, will discuss her childhood, her struggle to make it to Little Rock for her first day of college and stories of her residency at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences that influenced her to become an advocate for children’s health and an opponent of teenage pregnancy.

Born the daughter of a sharecropper in Howard County during the Great Depression, Elders earned a scholarship to Philander Smith College in 1949, becoming the first in her family to attend college.

Inspired by a lecture by Edith Irby Jones, the first woman to attend UAMS, Elders joined the U.S. Army’s Medical Specialist Corps and trained as a physical therapist to treat wounded Korean War veterans.

With the help of the GI Bill, Elders earned a medical degree and a master’s degree in biochemistry from UAMS, where she was later appointed chief pediatric resident specializing in pediatric endocrinology.

In 1987, then-Gov. Bill Clinton appointed Elders director of the state Department of Health. She drew the ire of conservative groups by advocating the dispensing of contraceptives at school-based health clinics.

After Clinton was elected president, he appointed Elders as U.S. surgeon general in 1993. She was forced to resign less than a year later.

At a United Nations conference in 1994, in response to a psychologist’s question whether masturbation could be a useful tool in discouraging school children from becoming sexually active too early, Elders said masturbation was “something that is part of human sexuality and a part of something that perhaps should be taught.” Her comments created a firestorm of criticism from conservatives already put off by Elder’s pro-choice views.

After Clinton forced her out as surgeon general, Elders return to UAMS to practice medicine. Her autobiography, “Joycelyn Elders, MD: From Sharecropper’s Daughter to Surgeon General of the United States,” was published in 1996. She resigned from practicing medicine in 1999 but has continued to lecture on issues regarding AIDS, adolescent sexuality and national health care.

AETN’s “Men and Women of Distinction” series features interviews with prominent Arkansans known for their citizenship, character and accomplishments. The series has previously featured former governors and U.S. Sens. David Pryor and Dale Bumpers, as well as former Gov. Sid McMath and Judge Morris Arnold.