{"id":8355,"date":"2016-01-14T11:00:29","date_gmt":"2016-01-14T16:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/?p=8355"},"modified":"2023-10-10T09:45:52","modified_gmt":"2023-10-10T13:45:52","slug":"the-medical-civil-rights-movement-and-access-to-health-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/2016\/01\/14\/the-medical-civil-rights-movement-and-access-to-health-care\/","title":{"rendered":"The Medical Civil Rights Movement and Access to Health Care"},"content":{"rendered":"

Circulating Now welcomes guest blogger Beatrix Hoffman<\/a>. Dr. Hoffman is Professor of History at Northern Illinois University and guest curator of NLM\u2019s most recent exhibition, For All the People: A Century of Citizen Action in Health Care Reform<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0 With the extension to open enrollment at HealthCare.gov<\/a> in the news, <\/i>here is the second of two posts<\/a> exploring key themes from the exhibition.<\/em><\/p>\n

Viewers of the cable TV show \u201cThe Knick<\/a>\u201d have come to know Dr. Algernon Edwards<\/a>, a fictional African American surgeon at an early twentieth century New York hospital. The brilliant Dr. Edwards faces many trials as he battles the prejudices of white physicians and patients. He even opens a secret clinic in the hospital\u2019s basement to treat African American patients who had been turned away upstairs and by other hospitals. \u201cThe Knick\u201d is perhaps the first television series to so powerfully depict not only racial discrimination in the medical profession, but also the denial of care based on race, a tragic but central fact of U.S. health care history.<\/p>\n

While Dr. Edwards mostly stands alone, a civil rights movement in health care<\/a> began even earlier than the years depicted on \u201cThe Knick,\u201d and continues today. In response to racial discrimination by most medical and nursing colleges in the U.S., physicians, nurses, and community activists in Chicago raised funds to open Provident Hospital and Training School in 1891. Some medical schools for blacks had been established earlier, but Provident was the first such institution controlled by an African American leadership, and founded explicitly to combat discrimination.<\/p>\n

\"33<\/a>
Interns and nurses at Provident Hospital and Training School, Chicago, 1922
National Library of Medicine<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Segregation, discrimination, and poverty led to disproportionately high rates of sickness and mortality among the African American population. Civil rights groups, churches, and community organizations fought these conditions through educational initiatives such as National Negro Health Week (1914\u201351), infant health stations, and nutritional programs to help curb maternal and infant mortality. Women\u2019s clubs sponsored visiting nurse associations that provided communities with home nursing services, preventive and prenatal care, and health education.<\/p>\n

\"Exterior<\/a>
A visiting nurse stands by a car outside the Savannah Health Center, ca. 1930
National Library of Medicine #101441642<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After World War II, the medical civil rights movement increasingly focused on ending segregation in the mainstream health care system. The National Medical Association, the organization of black physicians, protested the pro-segregation provisions of the 1948 Hill-Burton Hospital Survey and Construction Act, and demanded an end to racial discrimination by the American Medical Association, which permitted all-white local chapters. The interracial Medical Committee for Civil Rights (MCCR) was founded by physicians John Holloman Jr. and Walter Lear in 1963. The MCCR made national headlines by picketing the AMA\u2019s convention in Atlantic City that year with signs asking the AMA to \u201cend all segregation and discrimination in medical care.\u201d MCCR members also participated in the 1963 March on Washington<\/a> for Jobs and Freedom.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
Medical Committee for Civil Rights at the March on Washington, 1963
National Library of Medicine #101455945<\/em><\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Leonidas H. Berry<\/a>, M.D. was elected president of the National Medical Association<\/a> (NMA) in 1965. Berry, a renowned gastroenterologist who spent much of his career at Provident Hospital in Chicago, had personally experienced discrimination when he was repeatedly denied an appointment as attending physician at another Chicago hospital. As head of the NMA, Berry increased pressure on the American Medical Association to desegregate, and in 1968, the AMA finally agreed to end its practice of racial exclusion.<\/p>\n

\"A <\/a>
Quadrennial Report of the Connectional Health Commission, 1968 NLM, Leonidas H. Berry Papers Box 3 Folder 3 <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"A <\/a>
Program for a conference in which Dr. Barry served as moderator for a panel of speakers, 1970 NLM, Leonidas H. Berry Papers Box 3 Folder 1 <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"a <\/a>
“Flying Black Medics project…” clipping from Chicago Defender, October 17, 1977 NLM, Leonidas H. Berry Papers Box 3 Folder 1 <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

The end of official segregation did not end the differential treatment of African Americans in health care. Berry recognized continuing problems of access and affordability and turned his attention to the poorest black communities, focusing especially on the southern Illinois town of Cairo. With the support of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and Cairo civil rights organizations, Berry organized a group of Chicago health professionals who chartered two airplanes and began making regular flights from Chicago to Cairo to provide care to the people there. They called themselves the \u201cFlying Black Medics.\u201d As well as challenging racial disparities and unequal access to health care, Leonidas Berry had also invented the remote area medical service.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beatrix Hoffman is guest curator of the NLM exhibition, For All the People: A Century of Citizen Action in Health Care Reform<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19605840,"featured_media":20466,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The Medical Civil Rights Movement and Access to Health Care - Guest Curator Dr. Beatrix Hoffman on civil rights and health care reform","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2029,51136828,51014],"tags":[6722,168941,10941,678875801,20052,5563,678875950],"class_list":["post-8355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibitions","category-for-all-the-people","category-guests","tag-activism","tag-african-american-history","tag-civil-rights","tag-for-all-the-people","tag-health-care","tag-legislation","tag-race"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/a016709_feature-1.jpg?fit=900%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3xcDk-2aL","jetpack-related-posts":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19605840"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8355"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27361,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8355\/revisions\/27361"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}