Dr. Gilbert R. Mason Sr. (October 7, 1928 – July 8, 2006), was a physician with a family practice, a civil rights leader, and author in Biloxi, Mississippi.

[1] After conducting the second protest on April 24, 1960, which was attacked by white mobs, Mason helped found the Biloxi chapter of the NAACP, and was elected president.

Late in life he wrote a memoir about his early political activities, called Beaches, Blood, and Ballots: A Black Doctor's Civil Rights Struggle (2000).

During his medical career, Mason quickly gained respect, but due to local racial conditions, he did not have full privileges at Biloxi Hospital for 15 years.

[2] Dr. Mason is most notable for organizing and participating in Mississippi's first nonviolent civil disobedience action, known as the Biloxi wade-ins, which took place from 1959 to 1963.

In 1959 he and Dr. Felix Dunn and their families, including children, went swimming at the Biloxi beach to protest the racial segregation of the 26-mile long public waterfront.

[6] Mason led a third wade-in protest at the beach in the spring 1963, two weeks after the funeral for Medgar Evers, who was assassinated.

African Americans had been largely disenfranchised since the turn of the century by the 1890 constitution that imposed poll taxes and literacy tests as barriers.

After the wade-in protests, Mason and other activists formed the first chapter in Biloxi of the NAACP; he was chosen as president and served in that position for the next 34 years.

[2] In 2000, Mason published a memoir about the wade-ins, entitled Beaches, Blood, and Ballots: A Black Doctor's Civil Rights Struggle.

In 2019, the National Science Foundation announced that its third Regional Class Research Vessel would be named in Mason's honor.