Physician Gilbert Mason, who, along with Medgar Evers, Aaron Henry, and Felix Dunn, organized the 1959–1960 “Beach Wade-Ins” that led to the desegregation of Mississippi’s beaches, practiced medicine in Biloxi’s largest black neighborhood from 1955 until 2002. In 1966, he hired the Collinses to design this one-story brick clinic. The flat-roofed building included a reception room at the front with separate men’s and women’s restrooms, a laboratory, and four examination rooms. In 1980, he became the first African American to serve on the State Board of Health.
A few blocks away at 255 Main Street, the New Bethel Missionary Baptist Church (1942) was the primary meeting place for Mason and the NAACP as they planned the wade-ins and other civil rights activities. A glass-block cross embellishes the center of the gabled facade, which is flanked by asymmetrical square towers; the facade was brick-veneered in 1958.